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Vice Blog

THE WILD WORLD OF HUAYNO (SAY IT OUT LOUD)

We get pitched a lot of stories for The Vice Guide to Everything, VBS, the Mag, etc, and most people are a bit miffed when their can’t miss profile on “this weird shop teacher I had in high school who I saw carrying a cross bow at a renaissance fair (I was only there to take the piss)” isn’t green lit. Shane always explains it thusly: “If you can explain your idea in one sentence at a bar, and it makes me say 'OK, what’s the first flight from here to there,’ then I’m in.”

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The one liner for Huayno Murders was “It’s like the east coast vs west coast rap wars of the 90s, but with more violence and lesbian female folk singers playing harps and wearing Barbie dresses instead of Tupac and Biggie.” Cool, see you in Lima.

Wendy Sulca - "La Tetita"

Wendy Sulca - "La Tetita" - Official Version

The problem was, it was almost too good. We shot the story this summer for Vice Guide to Everything, which means it was one of four segments in a 23 minute show. The women of Huayno should’ve been a 90 minute documentary unto itself--and then we could’ve at least started to tell the whole story. Huayno is the most popular music in Peru, but it's also the most violent. And the telenovela style drama it contains will blow your mind.

When we got back to NYC after a week of filming in Peru, we had to make a lot of decisions like:

“OK, I guess we’ll lose the 6’6” transvestite who acts as the Oprah of Huayno and spent three hours dressing me in her costume closet that would make Lady Gaga look like an amateur Halloween enthusiast.”

and

“Yeah, no I understand that there’s no room for the Justin Bieber of Lima, a 13-year-old girl named Wendy Sulca who lives in a mud hut on the side of a mountain but has 20M YouTube views and hit songs about tits and beer.”

Wendy Sulca - "Cerveza, Cerveza"

It was brutal. But the fact is, the Huayno Murders is an unbelievably complex story about love, lust, music, jealousy, socio-economic status, tabloid journalism, and ornately patterned skirts. There are a dizzying amount of players and narratives, and the hardest part becomes, quite simply, where do we point the damn camera.

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Wendy Sulca - "En Tus Tierras Bailare"

Wendy Sulca - "Papito"

By the end of our week there though, when you peel back all the layers and intrigue and deception, you realize that what you’re left with is actually pretty simple, and pretty sad: money makes motherfuckers nuts. The conditions for 85% of folks who live in Lima are absolute shit. They come from nothing, and when Huayno stardom gives a select few a taste of something--not stardom, just anything but “I wipe my ass with a rock”-dom--it tends to change people. And then other people get jealous. And then other folks defensive. And the dominoes continue to fall until they hit some crazy types and something awful happens. It’s a familiar story, and the kind of thing that makes you a bit dismayed by human nature, and curious about how we all don’t have nose bleeds 24 hours a day just trying to figure all this shit out.

RYAN DUFFY

For more crap about the J Biebs of Lima, watch VBS Meets Wendy Sulca