Chavela Vargas (1919-2012) was one of the most enduring figures of Latin American music and culture, known for her renowned affairs and heart-wrenching voice.
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From Wonder Media Network, I’m Alesandra Tejeda, and this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
It is an honor to introduce today’s icon. I have to admit -- I insisted on hosting this episode. Her songs are haunting and I often belt them unconsciously. She makes me feel closer to home and to myself.
Her self-assured spirit, renowned affairs, and heart-wrenching voice made her one of the most enduring figures of Latin American music and culture. She was not just a singer but a rebel and cultural outlaw. A woman who lived on her own terms. Bienvenida a Chavela Vargas.
Before she was Chavela she was Isabel Vargas Lizano. She was born in Costa Rica on April 17, 1919 to Francisco Vargas and Herminia Lizano. “I was born singing,” Chavela once said. She sang to entertain herself during her lonely and painful childhood. Chavela was “la niña rara,” the strange girl, in her religious family and conservative community. She did not present herself like a prim and feminine young lady, as was expected.
Despite her upbringing, Chavela was a romantic, and determined to chase her dreams. Leaving her conservative community became her obsession. At the age of 17, something called her to Mexico. When Chavela arrived, she first turned to singing on the streets. And later sang in taverns, bars, and cabarets. Chavela sang rancheras, a traditional genre of Mexican music that dates back to before the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Rancheras are festive songs usually sung from a man’s perspective with a mariachi band. When women performed them, they typically did so in heels and colorful bright dresses with ribbons. Chavela did none of these things.
Instead, she drank tequila, wore a poncho, toted a gun, and sang like a man. She didn’t even change the pronouns in the songs --”I was the first woman who dared to sing to another woman,” she later said. Her performance caught people’s attention--they wanted to know who this woman was who wore pants.
Chavela took other artistic liberties too. She slowed down the tempo of these songs and sang alone, with nothing but her guitar. That was all she needed. Her voice was not crystalline or delicate. It was a torrent of emotion and audiences resonated with the pain Chavela carried in her voice. She transformed traditionally cheesy rancheras into poetry.
Chavela quickly gained status in Mexico’s post-revolutionary artistic and intellectual class. One evening in the 1940s, she was invited by a friend to a party at Frida Kahlo’s home, La Casa Azul. The two bold women quickly became friends, lovers and each other’s muses for a time. Chavela allegedly lived with Frida and Diego Rivera for over a year. As the story goes, though Chavela and Frida were devoted to each other, they respected the other’s free spirited nature. So -- they eventually parted ways. Chavela’s many passionate and profound romances infused her singing. As a New Yorker article put it, she sang of “loves that burn all the more brightly because they are fleeting.”
Chavela’s life included many brushes with celebrity and the absurd. She packed a gun she shot off just for fun. The night of Elizabeth Taylor’s wedding, Chavela went home with the stunning actress Ava Gardner. She seduced the wives of politicians and businessmen alike who came to hear her sing. Later in life, shamans cured her of psychic illness, imparting powers on her too. These are some of the rumors people love to tell about her and she likely didn’t stop them. It was said that she “re-created the past.”
Chavela’s career was also marked by dark periods. She mainly booked small venues singing songs written and composed by her contemporary José Alfredo Jiménez. When not performing, Chavela and Jose Alfredo could be seen together polishing off bottles of tequila. And Chavela couldn’t begin her sets without a few shots.
In the documentary Chavela, a former friend and partner said that Chavela behaved the way she did in order to survive in a patriarchal society. She had to be more macho than the men, abide by the social code, and make others respect her. This included never mentioning that she was gay. If her tough and macho persona included outdrinking the men, then this condition began to cost her.
Venues stopped booking her and friends distanced themselves. Chavela disappeared for over a decade in the 1970s, and many presumed she died in obscurity. In reality she was hiding out in Tepotztlán, a town in central Mexico, battling her alcoholism. After a significant relationship in her life ended because of her drunken behavior, she stopped drinking.
Chavela reappeared in 1991, performing at a small cabaret in Coyoacán, Mexico City. The venue was packed with people who weren’t even sure they would see the Chavela Vargas onstage. One of the cabaret’s owners, Liliana Felipe, said that before the show Chavela was so nervous she asked for a shot, explaining that she’d never performed without it. Liliana refused and threatened to instead send everyone home and cancel the show. Chavela took a big breath and stepped onstage to deliver a mesmerizing performance to a public that had waited years.
Word spread. Before long, Chavela’s name was bigger than it had been for the majority of her career. She was invited to perform in Spain, where she met a new champion of her work, director Pedro Almodóvar. Pedro used her songs in several of his movies, saying they filled the gaps of his scripts. Chavela’s debut performance in Spain kicked off the golden age of her career. Her performance was so powerful and intimate that people began to follow her work religiously.
Chavela began to pack theatres and expanded into film. In the 2002 film Frida, about Frida Kahlo’s life, she appears as Death and sings below a dark hood before revealing her face. She sings “La llorona, ” a traditional Mexican folk song. And her rendition is one of the most famous.
That same year she officially came out as a lesbian at the age of 81, proudly reclaiming a word that for so long had been used to put her down.
Chavela’s career continued for another 20 years after she came back from obscurity. She enjoyed the company of new friends and an adoring public. She performed at esteemed venues and won awards, singing with the same brutal honesty that she had her whole life.
Chavela once said that she needed the stage to breathe. She knew she was approaching her last days when she returned to Madrid to say goodbye and perform one last time. Friends who attended the concert with Chavela claimed she wanted to die on stage singing. She was hospitalized soon after and returned to Mexico. On August 5th, 2012, she passed away. Her last words were: “I go with Mexico in my heart.” Two days later, hundreds of people mourned her death and honored her brilliant life in the center of the city that moulded her. She was 93.
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