Welcome to a new feature on Shellac and
Vinyl: The Weird World of Old Records. This one comes out of my
passion for old and weird records. We'll be exploring old fads in
music, where they came from, and exploring some of the odder albums
in my own collection.
We'll start with what will be a
semi-familiar name for record crate-diggers, Yma Sumac.
Yma Sumac's history is just as
interesting as her musical style. Sumac was a Peruvian-American
singer with a startling five-octave range. Sumac is said to be
descended from Incan royalty, and was formally said to be so by the
Peruvian government, but this is probably an affectation for
publicity and likely not true at all. Her real name is Zoila
Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo, but she went by the name
Imma Sumack early in her career, said to be derived from the Quechua
words for “beautiful girl”
Sumac's style of
music was part of a musical fad called exotica. Exotica was
supposedly based on the music of the South Seas, Asia and the Andes,
the “exotic” places of the world, but the music itself was more
based on what the Western world thought these places were like, and
not necessarily what they were actually like. So, you had this weird
mish-mash of half-sung, half-warbled lyrics, Tahitian log drums,
Andean flutes, south Asian gongs mixed with things like bird calls
and lion roars. This fad can be traced back to Les Baxter's 1952
album Ritual of the Savage. The movement itself got it's name from
the classic Martin Denny album of the same name, released in 1957.
Both Baxter and Denny we'll likely explore later on in future
installments, along with the work of Esquivel and Arthur Lyman.
Yma Sumac was the
foremost singer of the Andean style of exotica, and being of honest
Peruvian ancestry, it gave her a sort of legitimacy in a world of
“faux exotic” music. Her first album, the classic Voice of the
Xtabay, came out on the Capitol label in 1950. Sumac was a huge star
through the 50s and 60s, both for her prowess at the exotica style,
and for her amazing vocal range. She recorded version of Andean folk
songs, and through the 50s, performed lounge version of American hits
in Spanish. She performed on Broadway in a production called
Flahooley, the musical performance of which was released on Capitol
Records.
Remarkably,
through the 60s, she spent five straight years on the road on tour,
starting in 1961. A live record, Recital, recorded in Romania, was
released from this tour.
By the 70s, her
star was on the wane. She put out a rock record called Miracles in
1971. She began playing live again in the late 80s, and contributed a
track to Disney's Sleeping Beauty soundtrack. In the 1990s, there was
a faddish surge in lounge music, which saw Sumac again enter the
public eye, along with Martin Denny and Esquivel, among others, and
her song “Ataypura” appeared in the movie The Big Lebowski.
An interesting
rumour that has stuck around til the modern day is that Yma Sumac
wasn't actually a Peruvian princess, but a housewife named Amy Camus
(Yma Sumac backwards). Apparently, the rumour was made up as a joke
by her band, then spread through radio and print journalists. Her
pedigree was so ridiculous, it led the public to believe the rumours,
but her background was absolutely true. I even believed it up until I
started writing this piece and Snopes set me straight.
Sumac passed away
from cancer in 2008.
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