Friday Music: Chavela Vargas

April 17, last week, was the 89th birthday of Chavela Vargas, the legendary Mexican-Costa Rican singer. My friend Penny Richards of Disability Studies, Temple U. moderates a mainly read-only Yahoo group, Born on this Date, that features one important woman in history each day. Here's what she wrote about Vargas:

"Una mujer tiene muchas vidas que vivir. Para hacer muchas cosas y romper parámetros como yo he hecho, hay que ser muy mujer. Después dirá."

[A woman has many lives to live. In order to do so many things and break so many limits, as I have done, one has to be very much a woman. At the end it will be told.]

--Chavela Vargas

Today on our homepage: Mexican-Costa Rican singer Chavela Vargas, born Isabel Vargas Lizano on this date in 1919, in San Joaquín de Flores, Costa Rica. She remembers having polio and being blind during her childhood, but says that she was cured by shamans. She left Costa Rica at age 14, and there she sang rancheras (folk songs) on the streets to earn her living for years. She wore a red poncho and smoked cigars, carried a gun and dressed as a man, to protect herself in such a visible and vulnerable life. She acquired a limp as a young woman--she says she jumped out of a window after disappointment in love.

In time, she became a popular cabaret singer in Mexico, touring the US and Europe, a favorite with the likes of Frida Kahlo (with whom she had an affair, she says) and Diego Rivera. Her stage shows were frank in their sexuality--she dressed in dashing men's clothing and sang songs of seduction to the women in the audience. In 1961, at the age of 42, the first recording of her music was released, Noche de Bohemia. She retired for health reasons in the 1970s, only to return to performing in 1991.

She released an autobiography, Y si quieres saber de mi pasado (And if you want to know my story...) in 2002. In it, she recounted a 15-year bout with alcoholism in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2003, she appeared at Carnegie Hall in New York, in a show introduced by Salma Hayek and promoted by Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar, a friend. She has appeared in several of Almodóvar's films, and also in the recent biographical film Frida; she also appeared on the soundtrack of that film. She recently appeared in the film Babel, again as a singer.

She was awarded Spain's Great Cross of Isabela la Católica in 2000.

Today is Chavela Vargas's 89th birthday. She lives in Veracruz, Mexico.

She's on YouTube, here are just a few of the many clips there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duVaGM_JsME (a 2006 live performance)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQnNY8zMihs (a recent live performance)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuVjT2Rl7Bg (a 1998 performance for Spanish TV)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gQ31m4Yt0s (clip from "Frida")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bBRp-co68I (audio only)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqHh2U4TSJQ (audio only)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGESStAwS1k (slide show accompanies audio)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF6jEclOMcw (slide show accompanies audio)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mnZcErj-SA (slide show accompanies audio)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D2e8JMsTho (slide show accompanies audio)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAIF1IgiLeo (slide show accompanies audio of duet)

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chavela_Vargas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chavela_Vargas
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:br63mps39f8o
http://www.afterellen.com/archive/ellen/People/2005/1/chavelavargas.html
http://www.afterellen.com/archive/ellen/People/2005/1/chavelavargas2.html

http://www.glbtq.com/arts/vargas_c.html

See also:

Yvonne Yarbo-Bejarano, "Crossing the Border with Chabela Vargas: Chicana Femme's Tribute," in Sex and Sexuality in Latin America (NYU Press 1997). A shortened version is online here:
http://www.lolapress.org/artenglish/chabe13.htm

Happy belated birthday, Chavela!

For another fan of Chavela's, Brownfemipower, whom I miss very much.