Los Pericos

It gets repeated a lot that Los Pericos brought reggae to Argentina. It is not accurate, and the correct version is better.

Reggae was already playing in Buenos Aires six years earlier, and the one playing it was Luca Prodan with Sumo.

Luca had arrived from England in 1981 with dub and reggae lodged in his head, and he played them live in front of an Argentine audience that had no idea what that was. He did it strange, dark, with a singer who mixed languages and sounded like nobody else.

What Los Pericos did was something else, and it has a merit of its own: they made it massive.

December 1987

"El ritual de la banana" came out at the end of 1987 and was the best-selling record in Argentina in 1988. Triple platinum.

They took that rhythm, until then a thing for a few, and got it playing on the radio, on the beach, everywhere. With lyrics in Spanish, with humour, with a deliberate lightness.

That is the difference between opening a door and filling it with people. Luca opened it; they filled it.

It is no slight. Making something massive is a different job, and a good deal harder than it looks: you have to find a way for somebody else's music to sound as if it had always been from here.

The second record, "King Kong", from 1988, was produced by Herbert Vianna, of Os Paralamas do Sucesso. The two biggest Latin reggae bands on the continent, the Argentine one and the Brazilian one, in the same studio.

The slump, and "Big Yuyo"

After the enormous success came a couple of records that did not work, and the band went out of fashion.

El Bahiano explained it with a line worth more than any analysis: they had to climb up from the bottom after having been a fashion, and that is harder than the other way round.

"Big Yuyo", from 1992, put them back on top and turned them into a band with a foundation instead of a seasonal phenomenon.

The exit that was not on good terms

And here something has to be corrected that is always told with the edges filed down.

El Bahiano left Los Pericos in 2004, after seventeen years, to go solo. The official version in circulation says it was all calm, no drama.

The band denies it. They have said that what hurt was the manner, not the decision, and that they went into therapy in order to keep playing together afterwards.

And there has been no reunion. In July 2025, asked about it, Bahiano said there is nothing on the agenda and that plenty of loose ends were left.

Twenty-one years is a long time for loose ends. Telling it as a friendly parting takes from the story the one thing that makes it human.

What they did do well was what came after: instead of looking for an imitator, they put Juanchi Baleirón, the guitarist who had always been there, out front, and changed the whole scheme rather than pretending nothing had happened.

A minor but necessary correction

"Runaway", one of their best-known songs, is their own composition.

It is not a cover of that American hit of the sixties with the same title, which belongs to other people and another era. The two get mixed up often, and it is worth keeping them apart.

What to remember

Los Pericos are proof that popularising is not the same as inventing, and that both things have value.

Put on "Jamaica reggae", "Párate y mira" or "Complicado y aturdido" and you will hear exactly what they were after: music to have a good time to, made with craft, with not the slightest intention of stirring the soul.

They did not bring reggae: a melancholy Italian brought it six years earlier, and almost nobody listened. What they did was get the whole country to listen.

And their change of voice, in 2004, was not the friendly transition usually told, but a break that still has parts left open.

Remember them like this: the band of the summer, yes. But with a story behind it a good deal less light than their songs.

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Sources

Los Pericos, Argentine reggae and ska band formed in Buenos Aires in 1986. Their debut album, "El ritual de la banana", was released in December 1987 and was the best-selling record in Argentina in 1988, with triple platinum certification. Their second album, "King Kong" (1988), was produced by Herbert Vianna, leader of Os Paralamas do Sucesso. After a period of lesser success, "Big Yuyo" (1992) returned them to the top of the sales charts. Their historical role should be stated precisely: reggae and dub were already being played in Argentina from 1981, when Luca Prodan introduced them with Sumo after his arrival from the United Kingdom, and various sources point to that precedent as what made possible the later bands of the genre; the contribution of Los Pericos was the mass popularisation of reggae in Spanish, not its introduction. "Runaway", one of their best-known songs, is an original composition and not a cover of the American song of the same name from the sixties. In 2004 the singer El Bahiano —Fernando Hortal— left the band after seventeen years to begin a solo career; the members have stated that the manner of his departure was painful for them and that they turned to therapy in order to continue together, and in July 2025 El Bahiano said that there is no reunion plan and that matters were left unresolved. The band continued with the guitarist Juanchi Baleirón as lead voice, abandoning the single-singer format. Luca Prodan and Os Paralamas do Sucesso have their own profiles in this series. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of their work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, Rolling Stone Argentina, Página/12, Clarín and other coverage.