News & Updates — Yma Sumac

Happy birthday to that Peruvian songbird with the five-plus octave vocal range, Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo, aka Yma Sumac. Not truly an Inca princess but her name does mean "beautiful" in Quechua and she became a '50s pop music icon. She started her singing career on the radio in '42 and made her first records the following year. After moving to NYC in the late '40s she signed to Capitol and proceeded to become one of the major stars of the "exotica" craze. In the early '50s she toured Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Australia. She worked...

This entry into the series may well stand as one of the controversial ones, given not only some of the cheese that Les Baxter was involved with, but also for his role in the 1950's phenomenon of the white man's interpretation of "Jungle Drums", etc...as well as (unsubstantiated, and seemingly likely untrue when looking at it deeply) claims of compositional theft made by his understudies. But since it is my piece to write here, I am not going to flinch on calling myself a fan of Baxter's wacky arrangements, particularly in the field of "exotica" and exploito-film scores. Regardless of...