This explains her intense friendship with two great interpreters of the Mexican song: Lucha Reyes and Chavela Vargas. "She (Frida Kahlo) chooses canciones rancheros, the melancholic songs about retreat into complete loneliness commercialized by the mariachi, as hymns of serene despair. Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) herself was searching for the traces of an unspoiled, pure Mexico. Chavela was not admitted and thus they played her records at the Velorio by the beach.Īnother time in her "wild" years, Chavela Vargas says she had gone out to sing for Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and had returned home only one year later. Recently, she wanted to go to Cuba again because a young poet's last wish had been that Chavela would sing at his grave. "When I can find peace in my soul, why cannot the world do the same?" Peace is ignored everywhere in the world. Guerrilla there, indifference here, religion there, wars, terror. But Chavela does not want to make friends with whatever guerrilla: We live in a global sadness. It is a bolero, a Cuban bastard of the Habanera with a sensitive, erotic character which also was the anthem of all forbidden loves and, most of all, the anthem of the guerrilla fighters of Salvador. From there she brought a song that has been her anthem ever since: La Macorina with lyrics by Alfonso Camin is about the only song for which Chavela also wrote the music. " and "I died twenty years."Ī visit in Cuba was extended to a two years' stay. This is why they do not have any good one there anymore. " In those days, I drank all of Mexico's Tequila. " For about 15 years she had been drinking, rating her consummation of Tequila and Mescal at a total of 45.000 liters. " We have been singing and drinking with all the mariachis and all the drunkards of Tenampa. She toured concert halls, pubs, squares and bars with José Alfredo Jiménez, Mexico's most famous Ranchera-singer of all times. In about twenty years' time she became a Mexican legend. For three years she had been suffering from polio and already at the age of six her father showed her how to handle a gun and a rifle because there were a lot of revolts after the revolution.īetween 19 she started to sing. ISABEL VARGAS LIZANO was born on Apin a small village at the pacific coast of Guerrero as a child of Rancheros (farmers). Between Mexico and Fireland, left and right from the Altiplano, people speak the same poetic language. To avoid any wrong impressions: Chavela Vargas is not a cry-baby, even though she has already been called "the eternal crying of the Altiplano" and " a musical key to time's conscience and feelings" in Argentina. Just as Gardel said: I leave a piece of my heart in everything." The phrase chavelazo for experiencing emotions together, derived from her which is best explained with a little story: When her friend Amelita who had fought with Zapata as Coronela died at the age of one hundred years, Chavela and her housemaid sat down at the table crying and drinking Tequila together, followed by more and more tears and Tequilas."When there are no complications, I think up some. Only she can do this without creating laughter because this is her life. She is whispering, howling, begging, imploring, sobbing - showing emotions. Even the Canción Mexicana, today commonly called Canción Ranchera which had reached a certain commercial level in the past with Lola Beltrán or José Alfredo Jiménez, sounds very different with Chavela. She is a small woman, already 87 years old who went through the ups and downs of an intense life and returned some years ago with an incredible mental and vocal power - a Mexican legend some thought had deceased already a long time ago.Ĭhavela Vargas' singing has only little in common with the canciones romanticos (romantic songs) of Iberian tradition, boleros and baladas leading the Latin-american charts. If Chavela Vargas' place of birth had been several hundred kilometers to the north in southern USA, she might be a blues singer today - with her songs describing live, pain, and love with vulnerable frankness, with a feeling of radical loneliness at daybreak.īut because of her Indian descent, Chavela Vargas sings her songs in Spanish language.
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