| 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 |
(1922-09-13)September 13, 1922
Callao,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 (
/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. She became an international success based on her extreme vocal range, which was said to be "well over four octaves" and was sometimes claimed to span even five octaves at her peak.
Early life
Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo was born on September 13, 1922, in Callao, a seacoast city in Peru.
Stories published in the 1950s claimed that she was an Incan princess, directly descended from Atahualpa. Her New York Times obituary reported that "The largest and most persistent fabrication about Ms. Sumac was that she was actually a housewife from Brooklyn named Amy Camus, her name spelled backward. The fact is that the government of Peru in 1946 formally supported her claim to be descended from Atahualpa, the last Incan emperor."
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".
Career
Yma Sumack first appeared on radio in 1942. Sumac and orchestra and bandleader Moisés Vianco were married that year. She recorded at least 18 tracks 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 46 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. She was signed by Capitol Records in 1950, at which time her stage name became Yma Sumac.
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. 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 40 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 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 U.S. and abroad, including the Hollywood Roosevelt's Cinegrill, New York's Ballroom in 1987 (where she was held-over for seven weeks to SRO crowds) 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. She also recorded a new German "techno" dance record, "Mambo ConFusion."
In 1989, she sang once again at the Ballroom in New York and returned to Europe for the first time in 30 years to headline the BRT's "Gala Bertjes" 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 culture
In 1992, Günther Czernetsky directed 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, 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.
Vocal range
Yma Sumac recorded an extraordinarily wide vocal range of slightly over 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".
Critical reception
In 1954, classical composer Virgil Thomson described her voice as "very low and warm, very high and birdlike", noting that her range "is very close to four octaves, but is in no way inhuman or outlandish in sound."
Personal life
Sumac married composer and bandleader Moisés Vivanco on June 6, 1942. She bore a son, Charles, in 1949.
Death
Yma Sumac died on November 1, 2008, aged 86 at an assisted-living home in Los Angeles, nine months after being diagnosed as having colon cancer. She was interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood in the "Sanctuary of Memories" section.
Awards
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.
Discography
Albums
Singles
- Dance Of The Moon Festival / Earthquake
- Mambo!
Compilations
-
Shou Condor (1997)
-
The Ultimate Yma Sumac Collection (2000)
-
Virgin Of The Sun God (2002)
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The Exotic Sounds Of Yma Sumac (2002)
-
Queen of Exotica (2005)
-
The Voice (2012) unreleased songs
Other
- At least 18 tracks of Peruvian folk songs in Argentina in 1943 for the Odeon Records label, with Moisés Vivanco's group, Compañía Peruana de Arte—a group of 46 Indian dancers, singers, and musicians. (At least five additional tracks from these sessions are instrumentals or feature other vocalists.)(10" 78 rpm)
-
I Wonder on Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films, 1988 (one of Various Artists)
-
Mambo ConFusion (1991), Deutsche Schallplatten Berlin (Germany CD Maxi-Single), DSB 3025-5 (CD Maxi-Single contains 'Radio Version,' longer 'Maxi Version,' and 'Mambo Hip' version)
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^ a b Yma Sumac was officially born in Callao. Official Yma Sumac's Birth Certificate
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^ Ellen Highstein: 'Yma Sumac (Chavarri, Emperatriz)' Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy. (Accessed August 8, 2006)
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^ Clarke Fountain, "Yma Sumac: Hollywood's Inca Princess (review). Allmovie, reproduced in The New York Times. 1992. [1]
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^ 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]
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^ Yma Súmac biography
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^ Peruvian Magazine Batuta N°3 Yma Sumac "my mother gave birth in Callao". [3]
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^ Alvarez-Russi, Raul (January 26, 2010). "Yma Sumac de regreso al Callao" (in Spanish). Callao.org. http://callao.org/content/yma-sumac-de-regreso-al-callao. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
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^ a b Martin, Douglas (November 4, 2008), "Yma Sumac, Vocalist of the Exotic, Dies at 86", The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/arts/music/04sumac.html, retrieved December 11, 2010
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^ Cusihuaman 2001: p. 47, 103
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^ Argentina Session 1943
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^ Los Angeles Times. April 24, 1957. Jack Smith. Inca-redible: Yma Sumac, Mate Stage Free-for-All
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^ Suits, B.H.. "Frequencies for equal-tempered scale". Michigan Tech Physics. http://www.phy.mtu.edu/~suits/notefreqs.html. Retrieved August 25, 2011.
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^ Secret Museum of the Air, October 6, 2002 program (5:15–5:57)
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^ Moisés Vivanco
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^ Yma Sumac Receives Highest Peruvian Honor
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^ [4]
- Yma-Sumac.com
- Sunvirgin.com
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Yma Sumac at TV.com
- Excerpts from book on Yma Sumac
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Brief review of Sumac at the Cotillion Room New York City, September 19, 1951
- "Yma Sumac... the Voice of the Incas". Fate (magazine), Vol. 4, No. 8, November–December 1951
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Four Octave Inca, Pathfinder, November 11, 1950. Retrieved Oct 16, 2005. A piece contemporaneous with the release of Voice of the Xtabay.
- Dalton, Andrew. November 3, 2008.
-
"Yma Sumac, Vocalist of the Exotic, Dies at 86", The New York Times, November 4, 2008.
| Persondata |
| Name |
Sumac, Yma |
| Alternative names |
|
| Short description |
Singer |
| Date of birth |
September 13, 1922 |
| Place of birth |
Callao, Peru
|
| Date of death |
November 1, 2008 |
| Place of death |
Los Angeles, California, United States |
