Yma Sumac

Yma Sumac

Sumac signs an autograph after a concert in 1953.
Background information
Birth name Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo
Also known as Yma Sumac
Born September 13, 1922(1922-09-13)
Ichocán, Cajamarca, Peru
Died November 1, 2008(2008-11-01) (aged 86)
Los Angeles, California, United States
Genres Exotica
Occupations Singer
Years active 1942-1997

Yma Sumac (pronounced /ˈiːmə ˈsuːmæk/; September 13, 1922 – November 1, 2008) was a noted Peruvian soprano. In the 1950s, she was one of the most famous proponents of exotica music and became an international success, based on the merits of her extreme vocal range, which was said to be "well over four octaves"[1] and was sometimes claimed to span even five octaves at her peak.[2][3]

Contents

Biography

Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo was born on September 13, 1922,[4] in Ichocán, Cajamarca,[5] Peru. Although she claimed to have been born on September 10, "her personal assistant, who claimed to have seen her birth certificate, gave her date of birth as September 13, 1922."[6] Other dates mentioned in her various biographies range from 1921 to 1929. Some sources[7] claim that she was not born in Ichocán, but in a nearby village, or possibly in Lima, and that her family owned a ranch in Ichocán where she spent most of her early life. Stories published in the 1950s claimed that she was an Incan princess, directly descended from Atahualpa. A story claiming that she was born Amy Camus—Yma Sumac backwards—in Brooklyn or Canada was fabricated while she was performing in New York City in the early 1950s.

Chávarri adopted the stage name of Imma Sumack (also spelled Ymma Sumack and Ima Sumack) before she left South America to go to the U.S. The stage name was based on her mother's name, which was derived from Ima Shumaq, Quechua for "how beautiful!" although in interviews she claimed it meant "beautiful flower" or "beautiful girl".[8]

Imma Sumack first appeared on radio in 1942 and married composer and bandleader, Moisés Vivanco, on June 6 of the same year. She recorded at least eighteen tracks[9] of Peruvian folk songs in Argentina in 1943. These early recordings for the Odeon label featured Moisés Vivanco's group, Compañía Peruana de Arte, a group of forty-six Indian dancers, singers, and musicians.

In 1946, Sumack and Vivanco moved to New York City, where they performed as the Inka Taky Trio, Sumack singing soprano, Vivanco on guitar, and her cousin Cholita Rivero singing contralto and dancing. Sumack bore a son, Charles, in 1949, and was signed by Capitol Records in 1950, at which time her stage name became Yma Sumac.

The cover of Yma Sumac's debut album, Voice of the Xtabay (1950).

During the 1950s, Yma Sumac produced a series of legendary lounge music recordings featuring Hollywood-style versions of Incan and South American folk songs, working with the likes of Les 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 E. Y. "Yip" Harburg, but Sumac's three numbers were the work of Vivanco with one co-written by Vivanco and Fain.

Capitol Records, Sumac's label, recorded the show. Flahooley closed quickly, but the recording continues as a cult classic, in part because it also marked the Broadway debut of Barbara Cook. During the height of Sumac's popularity, she appeared in the films Secret of the Incas (1954) and Omar Khayyam (1957). She became a U.S. citizen on July 22, 1955. In 1959, she popularized Jorge Bravo de Rueda's classic song "Vírgenes del Sol" on her Fuego del Ande long playing album (LP).

In 1957, Sumac and Vivanco divorced, their dispute making news in Los Angeles.[10] They remarried that same year, but divorced again in 1965.

Apparently due to financial difficulties, Yma Sumac and the original Inka Taky Trio went on a world tour in 1961, which lasted for five years. They performed in forty cities in the Soviet Union, and afterward throughout Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Their performance in Bucharest, Romania was recorded as the album Recital, her only 'live in concert' record. Yma Sumac spent the rest of the 1960s performing sporadically.

In 1971, she released a rock album called Miracles, and then returned to live in Peru. She performed in concert from time to time during the 1970s in Peru and later in New York. In the 1980s, she had a number of concerts both in the U.S. and abroad, including at New York's The Ballroom in 1987 and several San Francisco shows at the Theatre on the Square among others. In 1987, she also recorded the song 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, appearing alongside Jan Hooks and Sam Donaldson.

In 1989, she sang once again at the Ballroom in New York. 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, Günther Czernetsky directed a documentary titled Yma Sumac — Hollywood's 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, Dead Husbands, and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Gopher Mambo was also used in an act of the Cirque Du Soleil show Quidam. The songs Goomba Boomba and Malambo No. 1 appeared in Death to Smoochy.

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.[11]

Death

Yma Sumac died on November 1, 2008, aged 86 at an assisted-living home in Los Angeles. She had been diagnosed with colon cancer only nine months earlier.

She was interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California in the "Sanctuary of Memories" section.

Voice

Yma Sumac recorded an extraordinarily wide vocal range of more than four octaves from B2 to C#7 (approximately 123 to 2270 Hz). She was able to sing notes in the low baritone register as well as notes above the range of an ordinary soprano. Both low and high extremes can be heard in the song Chuncho (The Forest Creatures) (1953). She was also apparently able to sing in an eerie "double voice".[12]

Discography

See also

Xtabay

References

  1. ↑ Ellen Highstein: 'Yma Sumac (Chavarri, Emperatriz)' Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy. (Accessed 8 August 2006)
  2. ↑ Clarke Fountain, "Yma Sumac: Hollywood's Inca Princess (review). Allmovie, reproduced in the New York Times. 1992. [1]
  3. ↑ David Richards, "The Trill of a Lifetime; Exotic Singer Yma Sumac Meets a New Wave of Fans." The Washington Post, March 2, 1987, STYLE; PAGE B1. Accessed August 6, 2006, via Lexis Nexis, [2]
  4. ↑ Yma Súmac biography
  5. ↑ Yma Sumac was not born in Callao as noted in unofficial sources
  6. ↑ "Yma Sumac". The Daily Telegraph. 3 Nov 2008. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/3374381/Yma-Sumac.html. Retrieved January 16, 2010. 
  7. ↑ Yma Sumac official website. Yma Sumac's Real Birthdate
  8. ↑ Cusihuaman 2001: p. 47,103
  9. ↑ Argentina Session 1943
  10. ↑ Los Angeles Times. April 24, 1957. Jack Smith. Inca-redible: Yma Sumac, Mate Stage Free-for-All
  11. ↑ Yma Sumac Receives Highest Peruvian Honor
  12. ↑ Secret Museum of the Air, October 6, 2002 program (5:15–5:57)
  13. ↑ "Four Octave Inca"

Sources

External links