Sumac, Yma (real name, Emperatriz Chavarri)

Sumac, Yma (real name, Emperatriz Chavarri), Peruvian-born American singer of a phenomenal diapason, whose origin is veiled in mystical mist; b. Ichocan, Sept. 10, 1927. She was reared in the Andes; it is credible that she developed her phenomenal voice of 5 octaves in range because her lungs were inflated by the necessity of breathing through oxygen at the high altitude. However that might be, she married Moisés Vivanco, who was an arranger for Capitol Records and who launched her on a flamboyant career as a concert singer; with him and their cousin, Cholito Rivero, she toured South America as the Inca Taky Trio (1942-46); then settled in the U.S. and became a naturalized American citizen in 1955. She was billed by unscrupulous promoters as an Inca princess, a direct descendant of Atahualpa, the last emperor of the Incas, a Golden Virgin of the Sun God worshipped by the Quechua Indians. On the other hand, some columnists spread the scurrilous rumor that she was in actuality a Jewish girl from Brooklyn whose real name was Amy (retrograde of Yma) Camus (retrograde of Sumac). But Sumac never spoke with a Brooklyn accent. She exercised a mesmeric appeal to her audiences, from South America to Russia, from Calif, to Central Europe; expressions such as “miraculous” and “amazing” were used by Soviet reviewers during her tour of Russia in 1962; “supersonic vocal skill” was a term applied by an American critic. Her capacity did not diminish with age; during her Calif, appearances in 1984 and again in 1988 she still impressed audiences with the expressive power of her voice.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire