Whaddya mean you don't know Chelique Sarabia

Some of the electronically-enhanced 70s recordings of Venezuela's Chelique Sarabia sound oddly ahead of their time. 

Chelique Sarabia – Revolucion Electronica En Musica Venezolana 

In the early 70s, well-known composer and arranger Chelique Sarabia (who penned the famous “Ansiedad” when he was just a kid) decided to register an album of traditional & folkloric songs from Venezuela but giving them a modern touch, using especially developed equipment (M.R.A.A.), based off of the principles of the Moog.

Chelique, helped by a team of gifted musicians, employed traditional instruments like the cuatro and the bandola llanera, filtering them through oscillators, playing with feedback, tape delay, synthesized frequencies, echoing sounds… The result was “Revolución Electrónica en Música Venezolana”, an album with a truly exotic, psychedelic, and ahead of its time sound.

Originally, the album was sponsored by the Shell Company in Venezuela, given away to customers, employees and friends of the company as a Christmas gift in 1973. It was titled “4 Fases del Cuatro - Música Venezolana desarrollada Electrónicamente por Chelique Sarabia” (“4 Phases of Four – Venezuelan Music Electronically Developed by Chelique Sarabia”). Once the exclusivity period with the petrol company was over, Chelique did a commercial release, this time under the name of “Revolución Electrónica en Música Venezolana” (“Electronic Revolution in Venezuelan Music”). Thanks to this, Chelique and his team were considered electronic music pioneers in Latin America.

“In the past five decades, there have been many attempts at modernizing the vast folkloric tradition of Venezuela, but nobody has reached the level of depth that CHELIQUE SARABIA did when he put his impeccable reputation as a composer and arranger at risk with this out-of-the-blue revolutionary musical manifesto in 1971. Now 47 years later, the music remains ahead of its time.” - Alex Figueira (Fumaça Preta)