Los Shapis

Chicha from the Mantaro valley

Los Shapis was founded on February 14, 1981 by the guitarist Jaime Moreyra, called the Caballero de la Guitarra, and the singer Julio Edmundo Simeón Salguerán, known as Chapulín el Dulce. Spanish Wikipedia and Deezer place the founding in Chupaca, while El Peruano and Gestión say Huancayo, with debut at the Coliseo Regional; the name comes from a warrior dance of Chupaca, and the rainbow-colored costumes represent the Tahuantinsuyo flag, which Chapulín calls the aura that protects them. Before the group, La República says Chapulín was discovered in a church choir by the group Los Ovnis. Gestión reports the first show was unpaid and the band walked home, with early crowds of 500 to 800; El Peruano says more than 70 people have been members.

Los Auténticos (Discos Horóscopo) is dated 1982 by MusicBrainz and El Peruano and 1981 by Crash Records and one passage of Spanish Wikipedia; Gestión reports about 200,000 copies in three months. The cover copies the art of the Ramones' Road to Ruin. They followed it with Los Originales and Los Indiscutibles in 1983, moved to Lima, and in 1984 played the Estadio Nacional and filled Chile's Estadio Monumental, where the crowd is put at over 45,000. They played the Festival Internacional de la Juventud in Paris in 1985, which La República says took them for Colombians, so they emphasized their Andean roots. A film, Los Shapis en el mundo de los pobres, came in 1986, and Chicha clip on Canal 14 in 1988.

The Roots of Chicha 2 (Barbès, October 2010) put "El Aguajal" before an international audience. APDAYC named them Best Tropical Andean Group in 2007, a miniseries, Chapulín el Dulce, aired on Frecuencia Latina in 2008, and "El Aguajal" played at the opening ceremony of the Lima 2019 Pan American Games. They played Vivo X El Rock at Estadio San Marcos on November 23, 2019, and the Gran Teatro Nacional for their 45th anniversary in February 2026. PopMatters calls them the first band to start using the term chicha.