On April 18, 2019, fresh off the plane in Iquitos, I jumped into the taxi of an elderly gentleman and explained that I had come to the Peruvian Amazon to find Ranil. I know where he lives,” he replied, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And before I knew it, I was no longer searching for the man — I was standing right in front of him. Ranil and I hit it off immediately and ended up spending a month working together on this project.
Born in 1935 as Jorge Raúl Llerena Vásquez, Ranil’s story begins in the Peruvian Amazon, where the sounds of the forest mixed with stray radio waves from Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador. He quickly understood that breaking into Peru’s music industry — especially as an artist from “the end of the world” — would be no easy path. He decided to start his own label, Producciones Llerena, something unheard of in this part of the Peruvian Amazon.
With a rotating cast of brilliant musicians by his side, Ranil crafted a sound that locals lovingly called „llullampeo“ — imaginative, unpredictable, and fabulously unrestrained. His percussionists wove grooves that have not resurfaced in the region since, and the 14 songs presented here remain some of the most vivid document of that fearless, free-spirited, often psychedelic ensemble.