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" and is considered a pioneer of world music. Her debut album, Voice of the Xtabay (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 (1952), Fuego del Ande (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, 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! (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. 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, 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."