The project will unfold through a process of rehearsal, collaboration and performance. With the support of the funding, we will bring Los Hijos de Lamas — leading representatives of the genre — to Berlin where they will rehearse and collaborate with artists from the local scene. Together with Dengue Dengue Dengue, the most important Peruvian electronic act, now based in Berlin, they will develop a unique hybrid live set. Renowned electronic producers from Peru and Europe will also contribute reinterpretations, making the project an engine for the creation of new music that fuses pandilla’s rhythmic energy with the sonic languages of experimental club culture.

The results will be presented in a two-day event in Berlin. The first day focuses on tradition and context, with Los Hijos de Lamas performing pandilla in its authentic form alongside video screenings of footage captured by us in Peru. The second day explores reinterpretation and experimentation: electronic producers present their remixes of pandilla, culminating in the collaborative live set between Los Hijos de Lamas and Dengue Dengue Dengue. This artistic arc — from tradition to innovation — bridges two worlds and demonstrates the transformative power of intercultural collaboration. In this sense, the event itself becomes a choque de pandillas - a vibrant clash between two expressions of the same tradition, one rooted in local ritual and the other transformed for global stages. The project will therefore demonstrate how pandilla can move between community ritual and contemporary club culture, creating a dialogue that bridges geographies, histories and audiences.

The project’s innovation lies in presenting pandilla for the first time in Europe, both as a traditional performance and as a newly reinterpreted form. While many world music projects focus on presentation, Choque de Pandillas goes further by actively commissioning electronic reinterpretations and facilitating rehearsals that merge traditional and contemporary approaches.

This is also the first initiative to explore pandilla’s potential in a club/electronic context, positioning it as a unique addition to Berlin’s experimental music landscape. The collaborative live set between Los Hijos de Lamas and Dengue Dengue Dengue represents a rare encounter: community musicians from the Amazon performing together with internationally acclaimed electronic producers, creating a one-of-a-kind performance that cannot be replicated elsewhere.

Berlin is home to a globally significant experimental and club music scene, as well as a diverse audience interested in intercultural exchange. Choque de Pandillas directly addresses both. It targets a wide public: from those engaged in so-called “world music” and cultural traditions, to listeners drawn to adventurous, non-standard, experimental club sounds.

For German audiences, the project expands the cultural landscape by presenting something completely new — a tradition never before staged in Europe — and by doing so in a format that bridges familiar contexts (clubs, experimental venues) with unfamiliar sounds. It reflects Berlin’s role as a hub of openness, dialogue, and cultural innovation.

The sustainability of Choque de Pandillas is ensured through its multiple outputs. The vinyl release serves as a lasting document of the first European presentation of pandilla, while audiovisual documentation of the event allows the project to reach wider audiences. The networks built between Peruvian traditional musicians and Berlin’s electronic scene will form the basis for future collaborations, ensuring that the impact continues beyond the immediate event. By combining heritage with experimentation, Choque de Pandillas creates not only a cultural event but also a lasting platform for artistic exchange - a contemporary continuation of the “clash” that gives the project its name, now staged between Amazonian tradition and Berlin’s experimental scene.

Choque de Pandillas

Choque de Pandillas is a project dedicated to studying and exploring the possibilities of pandilla, a festive and percussive music tradition from the Peruvian Amazon, by reinterpreting it through electronic music. The title, which refers to the ritual “clash of pandillas” during Amazonian festivities, also reflects the project's central idea: the encounter between traditional heritage and experimental reinterpretation. The aim is to create new, innovative forms that arise from this confrontation and to present its outcomes through a two-day event in Berlin and a vinyl compilation. This is the first initiative of its kind: pandilla has never been performed in Europe before and it has never been transformed in dialogue with contemporary electronic music and club culture. Therefore, the project not only introduces German audiences to a little-known yet powerful tradition but also demonstrates its resonance and adaptability in new artistic contexts.

Pandilla is a communal, high-energy musical and dance expression from the Peruvian Amazon—particularly associated with the San Martín region (towns such as Lamas and Tarapoto). It forms part of the sonic fabric of local fiestas patronales and carnival celebrations where groups gather around the decorated palm tree called the húmisha and perform collective, percussive music and dance that emphasise rhythm, call-and-response vocals and a powerful, trance-like momentum. Ethnographic sources describe pandilla alongside related Amazonian genres (chimaychi, sitaracuy) as one of the music forms that historically circulated in carnival contexts and helped define the “typical” ensemble sound of the jungle — quena, bombo, redoblante plus occasional guitar, saxophone or violin.

Pandilla’s social role is as important as its musical traits: it is a participatory practice that stages community identity, competition and seasonal ritual. During major celebrations, different pandilla groups perform from various cabezonías and later converge in the streets and main square, often culminating in the ceremonial cutting of the húmisha and a loud, festive “clash” of ensembles and dancers. Local news and TV coverage of Lamas’ carnival consistently highlight the physicality, mass participation and ecstatic character of pandilla events.

Although pandilla has a deep local presence, it remains under-documented and little known outside of Peru. This lack of visibility is precisely what led us to focus our attention on it. For more than a decade we have been exploring the dialogue between Latin American traditions and electronic music and since 2015 we have been particularly drawn to pandilla — impressed by its distinctiveness, its raw, high-energy drive and the ways it stands apart from other regional folk forms. We saw in it not only a living tradition of great cultural value but also a sound world with extraordinary potential to resonate in new contexts.

In July 2025, we traveled to Lamas during the fiestas patronales to immerse ourselves in the environment where pandilla thrives. There we recorded live performances, conducted interviews with musicians and community members and collaborated with Los Hijos de Lamas to record instrumental samples that will be used as a basis for reinterpretations. These experiences laid the groundwork for Choque de Pandillas: a project designed to present pandilla in both its traditional and reimagined forms and to create a platform where cultural heritage can meet experimental sound practices in Berlin.