Chavela Vargas's history reads like a myth: "In her youth, she dressed as a man, smoked cigars, drank heavily, carried a gun and was known for her characteristic red jorongo."
An article in the New Yorker, published after her death at age 93 in August of this year, adds that Vargas was appointed a shaman by an indigenous tribe, was known for her many lesbian affairs — said to have included Ava Gardner, Frida Kahlo, Lola Beltran and Maria Felix — and was even rumoured to have "carried off peasant girls at gunpoint." That last part, the New Yorker says, she vehemently denied.
Whatever the truth about her sexual escapades, Vargas was seriously badass, and the musical legacy of Vargas, who will be honoured with a posthumous tribute this week at Carnegie Hall, is undeniable fact.
Chavela Vargas sings "La Llorona."
Born in Costa Rica in 1917, Isabel "Chavela" Vargas wound up in Mexico as a teen, where she took to singing in the streets until her professional career began in the 1930s. Eventually, she became good friends with composer José Alfredo Jiménez and went on to become one of the most renowned singers of her era, recording more than 80 albums.
She sang ranchera music, literally "music of the ranches," based on traditional Mexican folk songs — The Associated Press noted in an obituary that Vargas refused to change the pronouns in the love songs as she sang about women — ultimately bringing the genre to global recognition. But she remained largely unknown in non-Latin North America. Fact is, if you Google "Vargas," you get a short-ish Wiki entry and scads of articles about her death. She wasn't much of a consideration in the U.S.A. and Canada before that, which is so often the way.
But Vargas won numerous honours throughout her life, including the Latin Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award, and was proclaimed a "distinguished citizen" of Mexico City. And perhaps the biggest force giving her music more widespread attention came through appearances in Pedro Almodovar's La flor de mi secreto and Carne trémula, and in Julie Taymor's Frida.
Toronto-based, Mexican-born singer-songwriter Quique Escamilla says on the phone that Vargas "was the best representation of traditional ranchera music around the world. She was the ambassador of ranchera. That's really important. Ranchera music is something very important in our culture and people sometimes forget."
Like many a mythical figure, Vargas wasn't without her tragedies. She battled alcoholism, and in the 1970s it got so bad she fell out of the public eye for 15 years.
When I ask in an email about Vargas's influence on Mexican music, songstress Eugenia Leon, who is performing at the Carnegie Hall tribute alongside Ely Guerra and Tania Libertad, tells me "only the depth of religious syncretism, a culture so thick and contradictory as Mexican culture could create this tragic musical personality. Chavela is a kind of anti-heroine. Despite her immense prestige, there remains controversy over her personal life and especially over her having a voice that does not fit into the traditional parameters of beauty."
That voice, always deep and rich, developed a haunting quality as she aged, like smoke dust and tequila, hot, dry deserts and lonesome, haunted nights (it's not a cliché if it's true).
"The music of Chavela Vargas expresses the pain of existence, the early morning, the hangover of bad love," Leon says poetically.
Today, a handful of women are keeping the tradition of Vargas alive, including Leon, Guerra, Libertad and, not participating in the tribute, Lila Downs, who just won a Latin Grammy this month for best folk album.
"The last time I saw Chavela onstage was last March in Mexico City, when she was presenting her last album, a tribute to Garcia Lorca," says Guerra, on how Vargas has influenced her own music. "I saw myself in her. Please don't think that I'm comparing myself to her talent but I'm just saying that I had a universal feeling of life while I was enjoying her intensity onstage."
Speaking of her own relationship with the audience, Vargas is quoted as having said in an interview with El Pais, "We artists are holding up a world that is falling. We hope. So they cuddle up to me, expecting to find love."
Eugenia León sings to Chavela Vargas.
A Tribute to Chavela Vargas, featuring Ely Guerra, Eugenia León and Tania Libertad takes place at Carnegie Hall in New York, Nov. 27. La Llorona: The Rebel Spirit of Chavela Vargas takes place at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Dec. 5.
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