NEW YORK -- Yma Sumac, the Peruvian singer with the most phenomenal vocal range of this century, is making a comeback before audiences that know her only as a legend to be heard on old records.
Sumac, 58, has been booked into Manhattan's popular Ballroom theater/cabaret for three weeks through March 7. Her grasp of four, pushing five, octaves is still firm, her theatricality still intact, her aura of exoticism still as palpable as when she filled America's great concert halls and stadiums with fans in the 1950s.
She is a contralto with a range that reaches beyond high C. Her record albums ('Voice of Xtabuy,' 'Mumbo!' 'The Legend of the Sun Virgins,' 'Inca Taqui,' and 'Fuego del Andes') were best sellers and for 30 years have been collector's items, making her a cult figure to a generation that knew little of her life and less of her whereabouts.
'They thought I was dead, but now they know differently,' said Sumac whose last New York appearance was a Town Hall concert in 1975.
She is interviewed over a cup of coffee between shows with six back-up musicians and synthesizers to provide the effect of full orchestra. Sumac is a small, vivid, still beautiful woman who looks more Spanish than Indian, although she claims her Inca blood is predominate. Her gracious charm and Carmen Miranda accent are immediately endearing.
'This is a new beginning for me,' she continued. 'Capitol has reissued my LPs in high fidelity and cassettes and they will be issued in compact discs in coming months. Four recording companies are negotiating with me for new records, and I'm working on a new concert program with music by the best composers of the world that will be suitable for a big production.'
Where has she been for the past dozen years?
'Actually I've been semi-retired, living at my home in Spain and with my family in Peru and writing music for the future,' said Peru's famous export.
'Most of the songs I am singing at the Ballroom are my own compositions, romantic songs sung in English. Only three numbers are from my recordings, sung in Quechua, the Incan tongue.'
In the years that brought her international fame, almost all the songs Sumac sang were written by Moises Vivanco, an authority on ancient music who was an excutive with the Peruvian Broadcasting company. He discovered her in the Andes village of Ichocan and brought her to Lima in 1941 to begin a career that was at first limited to South America and Mexico.
Sumac was billed as an Inca princess, descendant of the last emperor, Atahualpa. She demonstrated a wide knowledge of Incan culture and tradition, singing of lost imperial splendors in a voice that ranged from earthquake thunder to the fluting trills of forest birds, recalling Rima in W. H. Hudson's novel 'Green Mansions.'
Vivanco married Sumac in 1942 and brought her to the United States in 1946. They had several difficult years financially before Sumac established herself as a box-office draw, able to fill Hollywood Bowl and New York's Lewisohn Stadium as well as exclusive supper clubs. She appeared in a Broadway musical, several Hollywood films, and as a star guest on television shows.
After the Vivancos were divorced in 1958 as the result of a headlined triangle affair involving Sumac's secretary, Sumac's career dwindled in America only to be rekindled in tours of Russia and its satellites where she had been known only through her records. Then Soviet Premier Khrushchev was a Sumac aficianado.
'I had offers to visit China but couldn't go at that time because I had become an American citizen and as such was not allowed to go. In the 1970s I did a rock album, 'Miracles', in my own style of course. Then in 1983 I had a letter from a man I didn't know, Alan Eichler of Los Angeles, urging me to return to the United States.
'I decided to give it a try and Alan, who is now my manager, arranged for me to appear at the Vine Street Bar and Grille in 1984. I sold out the entire run, and have been singing in Los Angeles ever since, most recently at the Roosevelt Hotel. So many young people - especially singers -- come to hear me. They say, 'You have inspired us. You have helped us'.'
Sumac said she and Vivanco, who lives in Europe, are still friends and keep in touch. Their son, Charles, 29, is finishing his industrial engineering studies at the University of Madrid. He performed with his mother since he was a small boy, first playing the congos and later the concert guitar.
'He wanted to have the life of a musician and lyricist, but I said 'You must have a career like engineering because in show business you are on top one day and the next day nobody knows who you are'.
'I've never really been down, but show business is an up and down business. You have to have good brains and save your money.'
Sumac says her pet peeve is being classified as a Latin artist.
'I'm not Latin,' she declared. 'My music isn't Latin. I don't sing the tango. My music is different. It springs from my Incan heritage, which we proudly preserve in Peru. It is the music of the mountains.'
