Yma Sumac

Yma Sumac, born Zoila Emperatriz Chávarri Castillo on September 13, 1922, in Callao, Peru, was a vocalist, actress, model, musical composer, and producer whose career spanned several decades. She grew up in Cajamarca after her family relocated there during her childhood. Her parents were civic leader Sixto Chávarri and schoolteacher Emilia Castillo, and she was the youngest of six children. In 1934 she moved to Lima to live with relatives, and after private tutoring from the age of five, she enrolled in a Catholic school in 1935. Her stage name, Yma Sumac, derives from the Quechua phrase "Ima sumaq," meaning "how beautiful."

Her earliest documented public performance took place on August 16, 1938, at a religious festival in Callao alongside Moisés Vivanco. She graduated from high school in 1940 and married Vivanco on June 6, 1942. Following their marriage, the two toured South America and Mexico with a fourteen-member ensemble called Imma Sumack and the Conjunto Folklorico Peruano. In 1943, Sumac recorded at least eighteen tracks of Peruvian folk songs in Buenos Aires for the Odeon label, as part of Vivanco's troupe Compañía Peruana de Arte, which comprised sixteen Peruvian dancers, singers, and musicians. In 1946, she and Vivanco relocated 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 received a positive review for their participation in the South American Music Festival at Carnegie Hall. Their son Carlos was born in 1949.

Sumac was discovered by Les Baxter and signed to Capitol Records in 1950, at which point her stage name was formally established. Her debut album, Voice of the Xtabay, released that same year, reached number one on the Billboard 200 and sold one million copies in the United States. Its single "Virgin of the Sun God (Taita Inty)" became a significant seller in the United Kingdom, extending her reach internationally. Also in 1950, she made her first tour of Europe and Africa, performing more than eighty concerts in London — including appearances at the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Festival Hall before the future Queen of England — and sixteen concerts in Paris. A subsequent tour brought her to Persia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, Thailand, Sumatra, the Philippines, and Australia.

In 1951, Sumac made her Broadway debut in Flahooley, becoming the first Latin American and Peruvian female singer to appear on Broadway. In the production, she played a foreign princess who brings Aladdin's lamp to an American toy factory to have it repaired. The show's score was written by Sammy Fain and Yip Harburg, though her three numbers were composed by Vivanco, with one co-written by Vivanco and Fain. Flahooley closed quickly, but the Capitol cast recording has continued to sell as a cult classic. The production also marked the Broadway debut of Barbara Cook.

Throughout the 1950s, Sumac performed at Carnegie Hall, the Roxy Theatre alongside Danny Kaye, and Las Vegas nightclubs, while also conducting concert tours across South America and Europe. She released several successful albums for Capitol Records, including Mambo! in 1954 and Fuego del Ande in 1959, the latter of which included her performance of Jorge Bravo de Rueda's "Vírgenes del Sol." Her album Legend of the Sun Virgin appeared in 1952. Working with arrangers Les Baxter and Billy May, she produced a series of recordings featuring Hollywood-style arrangements of Incan and South American folk songs. In 1953, during the recording of "Chuncho (The Forest Creatures)," she developed a personal vocal technique she called "double voice" or "triple coloratura." Composer and music critic Virgil Thomson described her voice in 1954 as "very low and warm, very high and birdlike," estimating her range as "very close to five octaves." The Guinness World Records recognized her for the Greatest Range of Musical Value in 1956. She also appeared in the films Secret of the Incas in 1954, alongside Charlton Heston and Robert Young, and Omar Khayyam in 1957. Sumac became a United States citizen on July 22, 1955.

Sumac and Vivanco divorced in 1957 after Vivanco fathered twins with another woman; the two remarried that same year, though a second divorce followed in 1965. In 1960, she and the original Inka Taky Trio embarked on a world tour that lasted five years, during which they performed in forty cities across the Soviet Union over a period of more than six months. A film was made documenting portions of that tour. Their concert in Bucharest, Romania, was recorded and released as the album Recital, her only live recording. In 1960, Sumac also became the first Latin American woman to receive a phonograph record star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. According to Variety in 1974, she had given more than 3,000 concerts worldwide, surpassing previous records held by any performer. She sold over 40 million records in total, making her the best-selling Peruvian singer in history.

In 1971, Sumac released a rock album titled Miracles. During the 1970s she performed periodically in Peru and in New York at venues including the Chateau Madrid and Town Hall. In the 1980s, under the management of Alan Eichler, she resumed her career with concerts in the United States and abroad, including appearances at the Hollywood Roosevelt Cinegrill and New York's Ballroom in 1987, where she was held over for seven weeks. In March 1987 she appeared on Late Night with David Letterman, performing "Ataypura." That same year she recorded "I Wonder" from the Disney film Sleeping Beauty for Stay Awake, an album of Disney songs produced by Hal Willner. She also recorded a German techno dance track titled "Mambo ConFusion." In March 1990, she played the role of Heidi in a Long Beach, California production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies, her first stage role since Flahooley in 1951. In 1989 she returned to Europe for the first time in thirty years, headlining the BRT's "Gala van de Gouden Bertjes" New Year's Eve television special in Brussels and appearing on the "Etoile Palace" program in Paris, hosted by Frédéric Mitterrand. Fashion magazine V named her one of nine international fashion icons of all time in 2010. Sumac died on November 1, 2008.