Festejo

Festejo is the signature festive genre of Afro-Peruvian music, from the coastal communities of Lima and Chincha. A fast dance in compound meter, it is driven by the cajón, the cajita and the quijada de burro, with guitar accompaniment and a lead singer answered by a chorus, and it traditionally accompanies the couple's dance of the same name. Marginalised for much of Peru's republican history, festejo was reconstructed and codified during the Afro-Peruvian revival of the 1950s and 1960s led by *Nicomedes Santa Cruz*, and it remains the emblematic sound of Black Peru in the work of *Perú Negro*, *Eva Ayllón* and *Susana Baca*.