Wimoweh with Martin Denny
www.youtube.com/watch

Bo Mambo
www.youtube.com/watch


Ataypura
www.youtube.com/watch


La pampa y la puna
www.youtube.com/watch


Tumpa
www.youtube.com/watch


Wiki bio and links to her websites below


Obit from the UK Telegraph

Yma Sumac , who died on Saturday, probably aged 86, was a Peruvian

singer and a phenomenon in the 1950s whose varied, tempestuous career

started when her extraordinary voice, ranging over several octaves,

startled people on the album Voice of Xtabuy.

The album went straight into the bestseller lists and was followed by

Mambo!, arranged by Billy May, and Fuego del Ande (1959), perhaps her

best record. British radio audiences were intrigued and countless

requests flooded in to Children’s Choice, Two-Way Family Favourites and

Housewives’ Choice.

Broadway was fascinated by her appearance in Flahooley (which also

starred the young Barbara Cook) in the spring of 1951.

This strange musical satire starred Ernest Truex and concerned a genie

in a lamp carelessly left behind at a toy factory by an Arabian

princess.

The show gave the extraordinary range of Yma Sumac’s voice a chance to

range from low contralto to A above high C, but it also revealed that

the voice had not been trained.

Her part and the two songs it entailed had been hastily and badly

written.

Yma Sumac claimed to have been born on September 10 1927 (or 1925), at

Ichocán, a mountain town north of Lima, though her personal assistant,

who claimed to have seen her birth certificate, gave her date of birth

as September 13 1922. Her Spanish name was Zoila Augusta Emperatriz

Chavárri del Castillo; her Indian name, which meant “how beautiful”, was

Imma Sumack, which she later altered to Yma Sumac.

for the rest of the obit go here

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obi...umac.html



Yma Sumac (September 13, 1922 - November 1, 2008) was a noted soprano of

Peruvian origin. In the 1950s, she was one of the most famous proponents

of exotica music, and became an international success based on the

merits of her extreme vocal range, "well over three octaves", which was

commonly claimed to span four and even five octaves at its peak


Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo

Now known as Yma Sumac, Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chavarri del Castillo

was born on September 13, 1922 in Ichocán, Cajamarca, Peru. Other dates

mentioned in her various biographies range from 1921 to 1929. Some

sources claim that she was not born in Ichocán, but in a nearby village

or possibly in Lima, and that her family owned a ranch in Ichocán where

she spent most of her early life. Stories published in the 1950s claimed

that she was an Incan princess directly descended from Atahualpa. A

story claiming that she was actually born Amy Camus (Yma Sumac

backwards) in Brooklyn or Canada was fabricated while she was performing

in New York City in the early 1950s.

Imma Sumack


Del Castillo 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".


Imma Sumack first appeared on radio in 1942, and married composer and

bandleader Moisés Vivanco on June 6 the same year. She recorded at least

20 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 Inca Taky Trio, Sumack singing soprano, Vivanco on guitar and her

cousin Cholita Rivero singing contralto and dancing. Sumack bore a son,

Charles, in 1949, and was signed by Capitol Records in 1950, at which

time her stage name became Yma Sumac.


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 even 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

four numbers were the work of Vivanco. 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 LP.


In 1957, Sumac and Vivanco divorced, their dispute making news in Los

Angeles. They remarried that same year before divorcing again in 1965.

Apparently due to financial difficulties, Yma Sumac and the original

Inca Taky Trio went on a world tour in 1961, which lasted for five

years. They performed in 40 cities in the Soviet Union, and afterwards

all over 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. In the 1980s, she had a number of

concerts both in the U.S. and abroad including at New York's The

Ballroom in 1987 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 actor-comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Murray.


In 1989, she sang once again at The Ballroom in New York. 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 and two more in Montreal, Canada in July 1997 as

part of the Montreal International Jazz Festival.


In 1992, Günther Czernetsky directed a documentary titled Yma Sumac -

Hollywood's 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 Kahlua

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. The songs Goomba

Boomba and Malambo No. 1 appeared in Death to Smoochy.


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.


Yma Sumac died on November 1, 2008 at the age of 86 (although there was

some doubt as to her actual year of birth) at an assisted-living home in

Los Angeles, California. She had been diagnosed with colon cancer in

February the same year.


Yma Sumac.com
www.yma-sumac.com/


Yma Sumac Official Site
www.sunvirgin.com/