Wake the Dead and Stir the Soul | The Sharp Notes Interview with Chuck Prophet

The Sharp Notes with Evan Toth

When Chuck Prophet found himself lingering around after a gig in San Francisco, his band still buzzing from a sold-out set, he wasn’t expecting to stumble into a musical revelation. But as the club's DJ cued up a needle-drop on a weathered vinyl slab of cumbia, and the bass notes spilled through the subs, Prophet experienced something rare and electric. It was an atmosphere alive with rhythm, with movement, with the kind of communal joy that doesn’t require translation. That night planted a musical seed. As the patrons of the Mission District took to the floor, so too did Chuck to find his footing, not just musically, but spiritually and emotionally. The music called to him and he smartly answered.

His new album Wake the Dead, recorded live in-studio with members of both his longtime band The Mission Express and the Salinas-based cumbia group ¿Qiensave?, isn’t just an artistic pivot, it’s a personal renaissance. In the throes of cancer treatment, Prophet dove deep into cumbia’s vinyl history, crate-digging and DJ’ing his discoveries. He wasn’t just collecting records. He was collecting meaning. And through this rhythmic, border-crossing genre - music born of migration and resilience - he found a new sense of vitality. Wake the Dead is the sound of a man surfacing again: joyous, vulnerable, and utterly alive.

Critics have praised the new record and they are right to do so. But the true magic of Wake the Dead is how clearly it reflects an artist who’s gotten his groove back, through dance, through friends, through the dusty grooves of Latin America. It’s an album born not of calculation, but of a compulsion of healing and exploration and as Prophet leans into this bright new chapter - fronting the dance band that no one saw coming - it’s a reminder that healing, like music, often comes from sources that are most unexpected.