We met around 2006 at the opening of a shop where I (Rafa) was DJing. Felipe came up to me and handed me a CD with his productions. At the time, we were in the process of forming an audio-visual collective that would serve as a platform to help each other do bigger projects. So in this collective – named Auxiliar –, we started collaborating in many different things.
One of them was Zolcan Breaker, Felipe’s solo project, where I was helping in the visual part. It was with this project that we went to Trimarchi Festival in Argentina and got inspired to start Dengue Dengue Dengue (in 2010) after seeing Chancha Via Circuito and El Remolón perform.

We have always been very curious to understand new rhythms, patterns, and metrics in music. It doesn’t matter where it comes from or what era it is from, it’s all part of a big puzzle, and you can navigate the endless possibilities that that knowledge offers you. The only problem is time, which you need to explore and understand various musical traditions. So the idea behind the project is to keep moving and exploring different paths and techniques.
We started focusing on the mixture of electronica, cumbia and dub for the first album, and then moved slowly into zouk, batida and Portuguese/Angolan sounds for the next EP. This led us to African music, always drawing parallels between those sounds and our local traditions from Peru. So for the third album, we went fully into Afro-Peruvian sound, working for the first time with live musicians on stage. And now, for the last two releases, we have been focusing more and more on polyrhythms.

We both come from an electronic music background, but also, obviously, the Latin influence has been there from the beginning, so it’s just a matter of making these two worlds work together.

With every release, we hope to give listeners something new they were not expecting, a different shade of our sound. Something you can feel it’s still the Denge Dengue Dengue sound but pushed in a slightly different direction. It’s definitely a darker sound than other releases, so I think it fits well with the label.

The idea is to always find new ways to do things, that’s the whole idea behind the project – experimentation. So yes, for sure you discover some formulas on the way, but it’s about pushing those formulas and coming up with new ways to do things. So we treat each project differently, as a unique thing.

Mmmm… There is definitely some music that we could categorize as ‘sacred,’ but I would say that most music we’re inspired by is festive. Cumbia and Afro-Peruvian are festive and translate very well into a modern party setup.

Yes, sometimes I find it funny or weird that some people put everyone in the same bag. Those guys are great, and they have crafted a very unique sound that has become very popular lately. They are innovators, so there is a big movement of downtempo producers coming after them. I would say that there is a side of Dengue that could fit into that sound, but most of our productions are in a complete different tempo and metric structure.

We started using masks because we wanted to make a difference between Dengue Dengue Dengue and another project that we had at the time. Now it’s just our own tradition; we are not looking to resemble any specific culture, it’s just stuff that we like.

Yes, it’s not something that we like very much, but every once in a while, it’s fun to do an online show.

Last Saturday, Centro Fundacion Telefonica Lima hosted an online festival and we did a set.

We just have to adapt. It’s difficult to say what will happen… But in the end, we can always adapt, that’s the key.