Yma Sumac

The Peruvian chanteuse who trilled like a bird

Yma Sumac

1922–2008

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In the 1950s and early ’60s, Yma Sumac was one of the world’s most popular singers. Dubbed the “Peruvian Songbird” and the “Nightingale of the Andes,” she thrilled audiences with her 4½-octave range and dazzling virtuosity. “She’s either got a whistle in her throat,” a fellow musician once remarked, “or three nightingales up her sleeve.”

Sumac’s murky background enhanced her mystique, said the London Independent. Her date of birth was given variously as 1922, 1926, and 1927 in different Andean towns; she claimed descent from the Inca emperor Atahualpa. Some joked that she was really a Brooklyn housewife who had reversed her name, Amy Camus. Actually, Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo spent her childhood “in the mountains singing folk songs and pretending the rocks were her audience.” By 13 she was on the radio, “eventually being heard across South America.”

Sumac’s debut 1950 album for Capitol, Voice of the Xtabay, took the U.S. by storm, selling 100,000 copies, said the Los Angeles Times. With her raven hair and flamboyant costumes, Sumac “offered Eisenhower-era audiences something unique.” She played Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl; at the height of her fame, she was making $25,000 a week in Las Vegas. “She warbles like a bird in the uppermost regions,” wrote one critic in 1955, “hoots like an owl in the lowest registers, produces bell-like coloratura passages one minute, and exotic, dusky contralto tones the next.”

Although Sumac appeared on Broadway and in films, said The Washington Post, by the 1970s she was relegated to obscurity. She did retain a loyal fan base; her songs sometimes cropped up in movies, and “the magic-comedy team Penn & Teller used her music to score their stage routines.”