The singer will be remembered for immortalizing songs like “La Llorona” and “Macorina”.
A day like today, Chavela Vargas would be 100 years old, who will be remembered for immortalizing the songs “La Llorona” and “Macorina” in Mexican culture.
Isabel Vargas Lizano, artistically known as Chavela Vargas, who from her youth made ranchera music his own despite the fact that in her time it was considered “a musical genre of boys”, she was born in San Joaquín de Flores, Costa Rica, on 17 April 1919
Her parents, Francisco Vargas and Herminia Lizano baptized her in Guadalupe Parish on July 15, 1919, with the name María Isabel Anita Carmen de Jesús Vargas Lizano, a girl who suffered abandonment after the divorce of her parents, who did not feel like fitting in. no side and felt tied to formalities and social impositions that did not share.
For that reason, she decided to emigrate to Mexico, the country from which she obtained the nationality and where she resided more than seven decades. Upon arrival, I did not know anyone, lived in a roof room, was raised and sold clothes.
For several years she sang in the streets and small places where she was heard by José Alfredo Jiménez, one of the greatest artists and composers in Mexico.
It was thanks to her support that Chavela began to be heard and at age 41 she began to sing professionally until recording 40 albums alone or in collaboration with other singers, to perform at venues such as the Palace of Fine Arts, the Olympia in Paris and Carnegie Hall , as well as to participate in several movies.
In her discography, “El corrido hablar”, “Piensa en mí”, “Sentimiento de México”, volumes 1 and 2, “De México y del mundo”, “Sings to Mexico”, “Volver, volver”, “Para perder the head “,” Chavela Vargas’ Big 15 “,” The lady with the red poncho “,” Somos “,” En Carnegie Hall “,” Por mi culpa! “and” Luna grande “.
Through her songs or with personal performances she participated in several films, such as Frida de Julie Taymor, with classic songs such as “La Llorona” and “Paloma negra”, as well as in Babel , directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, in which he played ” You got used to me “, a bolero by Frank Domínguez.
The Spanish director, Pedro Almodóvar, a close friend of the singer was one of his first promoters in the Seventh Art and even contributed to his popular roots in Spain with films like La flor de mis secretos .
Defiant, radical, openly lesbian, wearing pants and a pistol at the belt in a time when women and men had assigned roles that were unthinkable to trespass, always with their cigar in their hands and a bottle of tequila in the other that led to a alcoholism that took her away from the stage for a dozen years, but “I came out of the infernos and I did it singing,” she would later comment
In the 90s of the twentieth century he returned to the stage, stripped the party of his singing and focused on the desolation, the pain, the rage that made him feel in almost a thousand concerts.
For its 90th anniversary, the Government of Mexico City honored her in 2009 by appointing her a distinguished Citizen , during an event in which she was accompanied by personalities from the cultural, artistic and journalistic fields such as Eugenia León, Carlos Monsiváis, Carmen Aristegui, Joaquín Sabina and Pedro Almodóvar, among others.
A year later he presented the album Por mi culpa , which includes duets with Eugenia León, Lila Downs, La Negra Chagra, Mario Ávila and again Sabina, who considered her his muse and dedicated the song “Por el boulevard de los sueños broken. ”
She also received recognition for the Latin Grammy in 2007, the Latin Honor Award and the Gold Medal at the Complutense University of Madrid. She was also named Guest of Honor of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
They gave their name to a street in Burgos, Spain, a nation that gave her the title of excellent woman, in addition to the Grand Cross of Isabel La Católica, in the year 2000.
In 2009 she presented the book My Truths, which she wrote in co-authorship with María Cortina as an interview in which she narrates in detail, much detail, her whole life as her love affair with the painter Frida Kahlo.
The so-called Chamana ‘saw one of her greatest dreams come true , when she stepped on the stage of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, on April 15, 2012, where poetry, singing, music, and talk turned the concert “Luna grande, homage de Chavela Vargas to Federico García Lorca “.
In July of that year presented in Madrid, Spain, the album The Big Moon , but the trip was very heavy and after a recital in the Student Residence, was hospitalized by a tachycardia and intense fatigue.
Only two days after her return to Mexico, on July 29, she was admitted to a hospital in the city of Cuernavaca, Morelos, because of heart failure and chronic renal failure.
On Sunday, August 5, 2012, he died as a result of a multiple organ failure, derived from respiratory problems; She was then mourned and continues to be mourned by millions of people who have turned this Costa Rican woman into a Mexican citizen as a citizen of the world.
Source: milenio
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