Los Belking’s and the Evolution of Instrumental Rock in 1960s Peru

Although it is commonly stated that the arrival of The Beatles in the United States in 1963 changed the course of Anglo-Saxon music, little is said about its impact on countries in the southern hemisphere such as Peru, where the long-haired quartet closed the era of New Wave soloists and the twist, and ushered in an era of popularization of Anglophone groups singing in English.

Their impact was such that almost all Peruvian beat and psychedelic groups of relevance between 1965 and 1969 began in that holy year, when Enrique Guzmán also arrived in Lima as a soloist to revive his recent hits with the Teen Tops. For this reason, in a vain attempt to stay relevant, the New Wave singers began to pose with electric guitars. Even Pepe Miranda, Joe Danova, César Altamirano, and Jimmy Santy staged a celebrated phonemic performance on television, wearing Beatles wigs and pointed shoes. A kind of surrender document to the English invasion because none dared to cover the greatest songs of those from Liverpool. As a journalist of the time wrote: "Against these [the Beatles], there can be no competition."

It was in this context that Raúl began to play with his friends from the neighborhood and perform at his public school, "Melitón Carbajal", motivated by the clarion call of the yeah, yeah, yeah. "I was thirteen years old when my dad won a twelve-string classical guitar in a raffle at San Juan de Dios. My older brother was the first to learn to play; I am the youngest of ten siblings. He learned first and played Cuban songs with a group of friends. That's when I liked the guitar, but I had to learn my songs in secret with only one string because he didn't want me to use it for practice," he recounted in 2012 to the book "Días felices."

While the British invasion progressed, along with some school friends, they formed Los Belking's, a name Raúl invented by distorting the name of a popular whiskey brand at the time. They combined songs and instrumentals until, in 1966, the disc jockey Gustavo Galliani, after hearing them in a morning show at the Ídolo cinema, proposed to be their manager on the condition that they definitively dispense with singers. They thus became the first group dedicated exclusively to this style to record in the country.

It was a risky move at that time. The Ventures, The Shadows, and The Surfaris only had relative success in the country, entering the charts on rare occasions. Also, Los Shain's and Los Doltons, who alternated between songs and instrumentals, were tough competition. Although there were more promising precedents in other genres. Percy Faith, Ray Conniff, and their Peruvian counterparts Eulogio Molina and Carlos Pickling had been sounding insistently on the radios since the late fifties. Similarly successful, on the side of Creole music, was Filomeno Ormeño. In addition, the so-called folk orchestras, which overflowed the coliseums on Saturdays and Sundays, kept alive the tradition of concentrating all their power on the execution of their instruments.

At the end of 1966, when they were in their final year of high school, the group was completed by Willy Sandoval on the second guitar; the Hong Kong-born bassist Jerry Lam, a great vinyl collector; and the Nisei drummer Walter Aray. Unexpectedly, the latter two gained the preference of the numerous Cantonese youth colony in Peru, who never stopped hiring them and buying their records. Thus, they signed a contract with the record label El Virrey, whose studio had four channels.