Cumbia Chicharra will unveil “Quinto Mundo”, their fifth album, on its release, December 12, 2025 (digital, CD, vinyl) on Music Box Publishing / L’Autre Distribution. This opus will be presented on Friday, January 9, 2026, on the stage of Studio de L’Ermitage (Paris) during an exceptional launch concert.
The single ‘Sueño de Domingo’ is already available on all platforms.
Cumbia Chicharra (France/Chile) fervently spreads cumbia in its own way: powerful, adventurous, sensitive, and generous.
They come in many styles: cumbia and traditional South American, plena, afrobeat, dub, funk, hip hop, Balkan, electro… This fusion becomes a joyous, explosive sound always balanced by the pulse of cumbia rhythm. In just five albums, this band of eight musicians has become one of the leading families of Afro-Latin music in Europe.
Cumbia Chicharra is composed of:
Pati Gajardo: vocals
Romain Davidico: vocals, trombone
César Bouteau: congas, tumba, tambor alegre
Olivier Boyer: vocals, guira, campanas, shekere, cymbals
Maxime Marachélian: drums, timbales
Benjamin Charras: bass, guitar
Sébastien Ruiz Levy: flugelhorn, cornet
François Escojido: keyboards, accordion
After more than 15 years spent between stages and recording studios, Cumbia Chicharra presents its fifth album, “Quinto Mundo“, this autumn 2025.
Its eight musicians form a loyal team that indulges in the luxury of playing what they like, here and now. Recorded without artifice near Marseille, performed live, mixed on location collectively, thanks to the magicians of Studio K, this album features eight new compositions and a trance version of Simon Diaz’s famous “Tonada de luna llena”.
Quinto Mundo is a fifth world, a musical planet that Cumbia Chicharra sought to evoke, a maelstrom of many different styles and influences. A world on the edge of dreams (Sueño de Domingo, Yacumama), imbued with poetry and contemplation (Tonada de luna llena). Quinto Mundo is a shared space, woven from interactions and small steps (El gusto, Lunatica, Le train de Toulouse), with struggles and determination (El estallido), and love in motion (Esa manera, La chica que no te deja dormir).
In this fifth musical world, it’s natural to hear, in a wave of Colombian ternary percussion, a captivating sound of oriental synthesizer (Tonada de luna llena), or to experience how afro-beat resonates all the way to the barricades of Chile (El estallido), how a cumbia accordion paying homage to Colombian maestros and maestras (El gusto) can evoke the taste of the streets of Marseille, or how a psychedelic cha-cha-cha (La chica que no te deja dormir) can take us to the borders of Jamaica and delirium… “Viejo me voy, ya te quiero tanto” (Lunatica). Never sit still and keep moving, Cumbia Chicharra cannot act otherwise.
Quinto Mundo: a dancing planet, a world that resolves its paradoxes, and that finally reveals itself in a large family of sounds, this is what Cumbia Chicharra wanted to offer in its 5th album.
