Yma Sumac

Biography

Zoila Emperatriz Chávarri Castillo (September 13, 1922 – November 1, 2008), known as Yma Sumac (from Quechua "Ima sumaq", meaning "how beautiful"), was a Peruvian-born vocalist, actress, model, musical composer and producer. She won a Guinness World Record for the Greatest Range of Musical Value in 1956. She has also been called "Queen of Exotica×Queen of Exotica2005 · Album · CompilationSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 54 tracks · 2 discsDisc 11I Love Only You (A ti solita ti quiero)2:192The Hummingbird (El picaflor)2:193Indian Love (Amor indio)2:154La Benita2:475Cholitas punenas2:186Cholo traicionero2:537Beautiful Eyes (Que lindos ojos)2:188One Love (Un amor)1:419The Sun Maidens (Virgenes del sol)3:2210Waraka tusuy3:1911Virgin of the Sun God (Taita inty)3:0612Dance of the Moon Festival (Choladas)2:3013High Andes (Ataypura)3:0214Chant of the Chosen Maidens (Accla taqui)2:4515Earthquake (Tumpa)3:2016Dance of the Winds (Wayra)3:0117Monkeys (Monos)2:4018Lure of the Unknown Love (Xtabay)3:1619Birds / Enchantment3:0120Najlas Song of Joy / Arabian for ''Get Happy''1:2021Najlas Lament3:1722Babalu2:4923Wimoweh2:4124Inca Love Song (Kuyawa)2:4625Suray surita3:1926No es vida2:2127Mamallay!2:5928Karibe taki3:01Disc 21Fire in the Andes (Witallia!)2:232Lament3:183Zana2:034The Forest Creatures (Chuncho)3:415Andean Don Juan (Llulla mak'ta)2:276My Destiny (Malaya!)3:287Ripui3:028Planting Song (K'arawi)3:209Call of the Andes (Cumbe-maita)3:0910Cry (Wak'ai)2:3111Royal Anthem (Incacho)3:1012Bo mambo3:2113Indian Carnival2:0614Taki rari1:5115Gopher2:1616Chicken Talk3:0317Malambo No.12:5618Five Bottles Mambo2:4619Jungla2:2220Panarima3:2521Ccori canastitay2:2222Montana3:4023Kon-tiki3:0924Carnavalito boliviano2:0425Cha cha gitano3:5126Goomba boomba4:10" and is considered a pioneer of world music.
Her debut album, Voice of the Xtabay×Voice of the Xtabay1950 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 8 tracks · 4 discsDisc 1AVirgin of the Sun God (Taita Inty)BLure of the Unknown Love (Xtabay)3:19Disc 2CHigh Andes! (Ataypura!)DMonkeys (Monos)Disc 3EChant of the Chosen Maidens (Accla Taqui)FDance of the Winds (Wayra)Disc 4GEarthquake! (Tumpa!)HDance of the Moon Festival (Choladas) (1950), peaked at number one on the Billboard 200, selling a million copies in the United States, and its single, "Virgin of the Sun God (Taita Inty)", was a big seller in the United Kingdom, becoming an international success in the 1950s. Subsequent albums including Legend of the Sun Virgin×Legend of the Sun Virgin1952 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 8 tracksA1Karibe takiA2Witallia!A3LamentA4ZanaB1Kuyaway (Inca Love Song)B2Suray suritaB3No es vidaB4Mamallay! (1952), Fuego del Ande×Fuego del Ande1959 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 12 tracks1La molina3:282Flor de canela3:213Gallito caliente1:564La pampa y la puna3:085Dale que dale3:116Llora corazón3:007Huachina3:268La perla de chira3:449Mi palomita3:1610Vírgenes del sol2:5111Gallito ciego2:1512Clamor2:53 (1959) and Mambo! (1955), were also successful. In 1951, Sumac became the first Latin American and Peruvian female singer to debut on Broadway.
In "Chuncho (The Forest Creatures)" (1953), she developed her own technical singing, named "double voice" or "triple coloratura". During the same period, she performed at Carnegie Hall and Lewisohn Stadium. In 1960, she became the first Latin American woman to get a phonograph record star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Afterwards she toured the Soviet Union, selling more than 20 million tickets.
According to Variety in 1974, Sumac had more than 3,000 concerts "covering the entire globe", breaking any previous records by a performer. Fashion magazine V listed her as one of the top nine international fashion icons of all time in 2010. She sold over 40 million records, making her the best-selling Peruvian singer in history.

Early life

Sumac was born Zoila Emperatriz Chávarri Castillo on September 13, 1922, in Callao, Peru. Then the family (a middle class one) moved to Cajamarca, where she spent her childhood. Her parents were the civic leader Sixto Chávarri (Cajamarca) and the schoolteacher Emilia Castillo (Ancash). Sumac was the youngest of six children. Growing up with the air of the Andean mountains, imitating the birds and other animals, she was "unintentionally making" her huge vocal range. In 1934, she traveled to live in Lima with relatives. After being privately tutored from the age of 5, she entered a Catholic school in 1935.

Career

Probably Sumac's first public appearance was on August 16, 1938, with Moises Vivanco in a religious festival at Callao. She graduated high school in 1940. She recorded at least 18 tracks of Peruvian folk songs in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1943. These early recordings for the Odeon label featured composer Moisés Vivanco's troupe Compañía Peruana de Arte, of 16 Peruvian dancers, singers, and musicians.
She was discovered by American composer Les Baxter, a pioneer of exotica, and signed to Capitol Records in 1950, at which time she adopted the name Yma Sumac. Her first album, Voice of the Xtabay×Voice of the Xtabay1950 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 8 tracks · 4 discsDisc 1AVirgin of the Sun God (Taita Inty)BLure of the Unknown Love (Xtabay)3:19Disc 2CHigh Andes! (Ataypura!)DMonkeys (Monos)Disc 3EChant of the Chosen Maidens (Accla Taqui)FDance of the Winds (Wayra)Disc 4GEarthquake! (Tumpa!)HDance of the Moon Festival (Choladas), launched a period of fame that included performances at the Hollywood Bowl and Carnegie Hall.
In 1950, she made her first tour to Europe and Africa, and debuted at the Royal Albert Hall in London and the Royal Festival Hall before the future Queen Elizabeth II. She presented more than 80 concerts in London and 16 concerts in Paris. A second tour took her to the Far East: Persia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, Thailand, Sumatra, the Philippines, and Australia. Her fame in countries like Greece, Israel and Russia made her change her two-week stay to six months. During the 1950s, she produced a series of best-selling recordings of lounge music featuring Hollywood-style arrangements of Incan and South American folk songs, working with Baxter and Billy May. The combination of her extraordinary voice, exotic looks, and stage personality made her a hit with American audiences. Sumac appeared in a Broadway musical, Flahooley, in 1951, as a foreign princess who brings Aladdin's lamp to an American toy factory to have it repaired. The show's score was by Sammy Fain and Yip Harburg, but her three numbers were the work of Vivanco, with one co-written by Vivanco and Fain. Flahooley closed quickly, but the Capitol recording of the show continues to sell well as a cult classic, in part because it also marked the Broadway debut of Barbara Cook.
The 1950s were the years of Sumac's greatest popularity; She played Carnegie Hall, the Roxy Theatre with Danny Kaye, Las Vegas nightclubs and concert tours of South America and Europe. She put out a number of hit albums for Capitol Records, such as Mambo!×Mambo!1955 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 11 tracksA1Bo mambo3:21A2Taki rari1:51A3Gopher2:17A4Chicken Talk3:04A5Goomba boomba4:14B1Malambo no. 12:57B2Five Bottles Mambo2:48B3Indian Carnival2:06B4Cha cha gitano3:53B5Jungla2:23B6Carnavalito boliviano2:07 (1954) and Fuego del Ande (1959). During the height of Sumac's popularity, she appeared in the films Secret of the Incas (1954) with Charlton Heston and Robert Young, and Omar Khayyam (1957).

She became a U.S. citizen on July 22, 1955. In 1959, she performed Jorge Bravo de Rueda's classic song "Vírgenes del Sol" on her album Fuego del Ande×Fuego del Ande1959 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 12 tracks1La molina3:282Flor de canela3:213Gallito caliente1:564La pampa y la puna3:085Dale que dale3:116Llora corazón3:007Huachina3:268La perla de chira3:449Mi palomita3:1610Vírgenes del sol2:5111Gallito ciego2:1512Clamor2:53. In 1957 Sumac and Vivanco divorced, after Vivanco sired twins with another woman. They remarried that same year, but a second divorce followed in 1965. Apparently due to financial difficulties, Sumac and the original Inka Taky Trio went on a world tour in 1960, which lasted for five years. They performed in 40 cities in the Soviet Union for over six months, and a film was shot recording some moments of the tour, and afterward throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America. Their performance in Bucharest,Romania, was recorded as the album Recital×Recital1990 · Album · LiveSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 14 tracks1Fuego sobre los Andes7:302Ataypura3:203Montana mama4:014Amor indio3:015Serenata india2:196Supay Taki3:247Goomba boomba3:468Llama caravana2:169Cueca chilena3:2310Ccori canastitay2:3611Wambra3:1112Taita inti5:5013Marinera3:1214Chuncho6:45, her only live record. Sumac spent the rest of the 1960s performing sporadically.

Personal life

She married Moisés Vivanco on June 6, 1942. After this date, Moisés and Yma toured South America and Mexico as a group of fourteen musicians called Imma Sumack and the Conjunto Folklorico Peruano. Some people in Peru did not appreciate her style of singing, most notably the writer José María Arguedas (La Prensa, 1944). In 1946, Sumac and Vivanco moved to New York City, where they performed as the Inka Taqui Trio, Sumac singing soprano, Vivanco on guitar, and her cousin, Cholita Rivero, singing contralto and dancing. The group was unable to attain any success; however, their participation in the South American Music Festival in Carnegie Hall was reviewed positively. In 1949, Yma gave birth to their only child, Carlos.

Vocal range

Sumac had a five-octave vocal range according to some reports, but other reports (and recordings) document four-and-a-half at the peak of her singing career. Shortly after her death, the BBC noted that a typical trained singer has a range of about three octaves.
In 1954, the American composer and music critic Virgil Thomson described Sumac's voice as "very low and warm, very high and birdlike," noting that her range "is very close to five octaves, but is in no way inhuman or outlandish in sound."

Later career

In 1971, Sumac released a rock album, Miracles×Miracles1971 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 10 tracksA1Remember4:03A2Medicine Man3:00A3Let Me Hear You2:24A4Tree of Life2:50A5Flame Tree2:41B1Zebra2:40B2Azure Sands2:33B3Look Around2:09B4Magenta Mountain2:55B5El condor pasa4:36. She performed in concert from time to time during the 1970s in Peru and later in New York at the Chateau Madrid and Town Hall. In the 1980s, she resumed her career under the management of Alan Eichler, and had a number of concerts both in the United States and abroad, including the Hollywood Roosevelt Cinegrill, New York's Ballroom in 1987 (where she was held over for seven weeks to standing-room only crowds) and several San Francisco shows at the Theatre on the Square among others.
In 1987, she recorded "I Wonder" from the Disney film Sleeping Beauty for Stay Awake, an album of songs from Disney movies, produced by Hal Willner. She sang "Ataypura" during a March 19, 1987, appearance on Late Night with David Letterman. She recorded a new German "techno" dance record, "Mambo ConFusion".
In 1989, she sang again at the Ballroom in New York and returned to Europe for the first time in 30 years to headline the BRT's "Gala van de Gouden Bertjes" New Year's Eve TV special in Brussels as well as the "Etoile Palace" program in Paris hosted by Frederic Mitterrand. In March 1990, she played the role of Heidi in Stephen Sondheim's Follies, in Long Beach, California, her first attempt at serious theater since Flahooley in 1951.
She also gave several concerts in the summer of 1996 in San Francisco and Hollywood as well as two more in Montreal, Canada, in July 1997 as part of the Montreal International Jazz Festival. In 1992, she declined to appear in a documentary for German television entitled Yma Sumac – Hollywoods Inkaprinzessin (Yma Sumac – Hollywood's Inca Princess). With the resurgence of lounge music in the late 1990s, Sumac's profile rose again when the song "Ataypura" was featured in the Coen Brothers film The Big Lebowski.
Her song "Bo Mambo" appeared in a commercial for Kahlúa liquor and was sampled for the song "Hands Up" by The Black Eyed Peas. The song "Gopher Mambo" was used in the films Ordinary Decent Criminal, Happy Texas, Spy Games, and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, among others. "Gopher Mambo" was used in an act of the Cirque Du Soleil show Quidam, as a musical motif in the Russian show Kukhnya (along with "Bo Mambo" and "Taki Rari"), and in an iPhone commercial in 2020. The songs "Goomba Boomba" and "Malambo No. 1" appeared in Death to Smoochy. A sample from "Malambo No.1" was used in Robin Thicke's "Everything I Can't Have". Sumac is also mentioned in the lyrics of the 1980s song "Joe le taxi" by Vanessa Paradis, and her album Mambo!×Mambo!1955 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 11 tracksA1Bo mambo3:21A2Taki rari1:51A3Gopher2:17A4Chicken Talk3:04A5Goomba boomba4:14B1Malambo no. 12:57B2Five Bottles Mambo2:48B3Indian Carnival2:06B4Cha cha gitano3:53B5Jungla2:23B6Carnavalito boliviano2:07 is the record that Belinda Carlisle pulls out of its jacket in the video for "Mad About You". "Gopher Mambo" is used as the opening song in the British version of the television series Ten Percent.
On May 6, 2006, Sumac flew to Lima, where she was presented the Orden del Sol award by Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo and the Jorge Basadre medal by the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.

Death

Sumac died on November 1, 2008, aged 86, at an assisted living home in Los Angeles, California, nine months after being diagnosed with colon cancer. She was interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in the "Sanctuary of Memories" section.
On September 13, 2016, a Google Doodle depicted Sumac.
On September 20, 2022, a new memorial bust statue was unveiled at her final resting place, at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, in honor of what would have been her 100th birthday.

Myths

Stories published in the 1950s claimed that she was an Inca princess directly descended from Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor. The government of Peru in 1946 formally supported her claim to be descended from Atahualpa, the last Incan emperor. However, her biographer, Nicholas E. Limansky, claimed that "Hollywood took this nice girl who wanted to be a folk singer, dressed her up and said she was a princess. And she acted like it."
For years, rumors circulated that Sumac was a housewife from Brooklyn whose real name was "Amy Camus", which she reversed to become Yma Sumac. The origin of the rumor may plausibly be traced to a December 1950 review by influential jazz critic Leonard Feather, which also suggested that Sumac's recorded voice was in fact a theremin and that "Xtabay" was Pig Latin for "Baxter".

Albums

Voice of the Xtabay (Capitol, 1950)
Legend of the Sun Virgin (Capitol, 1952)
Inca Taqui (Capitol, 1953)
Mambo! (Capitol, 1954)
Legend of the Jivaro (Capitol, 1957)
Fuego Del Ande (Capitol, 1959)
Recital (Electrecord, 1961)
Miracles (London, 1971)

Compilations

The Spell of Yma Sumac (Pair, 1987)
Amor Indio (Saludos Amigos, 1994)
Shou Condor (Promo Sound, 1997)
The Ultimate Yma Sumac Collection (Capitol, 2000)
Virgin of the Sun God (Old Fashion, 2002)
The Exotic Sounds of Yma Sumac (Sounds of the World, 2002)
Queen of Exotica (Universe, 2005)