Martin Boyd

Chavela Vargas, the Mexican singer with an incomparable voice that seems to embody the spirit of melancholy itself, left us last year after a music career spanning more than 60 years that turned her into one of the most important figures of contemporary Mexican culture and the true incarnation of “La Llorona” (“the Weeping Woman”), the song that became her signature tune.

Although known around the world as a Mexican, Vargas was actually born in Costa Rica, in 1919, but would adopt Mexican citizenship many years later. She began singing in Costa Rica, before emigrating on her own to Mexico at the age of 14, fleeing a country which, in her view, was unable to recognize her talent.

In Mexico she worked in various fields until she stumbled into fame with “Macorina”, a 17th century rebel song that she recorded with her own arrangements. Chavela Vargas astounded audiences with her defiant attitude and her radical stance. In those days she kept company with Mexican singer Agustín Lara, she was the muse and friend of the great writer Juan Rulfo, and she lived with the legendary painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Among her most famous songs were “La Llorona” (“The Weeping Woman”), “Somos” (“We Are”), “Luz de luna” (“Moonlight”) and “Canción de las simples cosas” (“Song of Simple Things”). Vargas made more than 40 records – including both her own and those by other artists to whom she lent the deep tones of her voice – and performed close to a thousand concerts.

After years of struggling with alcoholism, Chavela Vargas returned to singing in the early 1990s. Manolo Arroyo rediscovered her in El Hábito, a bar she was singing at in the Coyoacán district of Mexico City, and he took her to Spain. Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar offered her a role in his production La flor de mi secreto. Joaquín Sabina, one of Spain’s most famous singer-songwriters of the last thirty years, invited her to sing on several of his albums. Her fame in Spain reached such a height that she has a street in Burgos named after her. For Chavela, Spain was “a country that made me its friend in the 80s, opening up its arms and its youth to me.” Almodóvar kissed the floor of the stage at Real Madrid’s Pabellón de Deportes and called for silence from the audience before presenting Vargas with the Premio Latino de Honor. The Spanish Council of Ministers awarded her the Order of Isabella the Catholic in the year 2000.

After half a century of live performances, the Mexican singer performed on stage for the last time in 2006 with a tribute concert in Mexico City. “I don’t want people to come see me just because I’m a likable old lady,” she explained. Nevertheless, she continued to collaborate on recordings with other artists such as Miguel Bosé, Joaquín Sabina, Ana Belén and Armando Manzanero.

In 2009, on the occasion of her 90th birthday, the Government of Mexico City paid tribute to her, awarding her the honour of “distinguished citizen”. A diminutive woman but with great inner strength, Vargas always rebelled against the traditional paradigms that delimited what it means to be female. In 2001 she told the Spanish newpaper El País, “I’ve had to fight to be me and to get respect, and to bear that stigma which for me is a badge of pride. To bear the name of lesbian. I don’t go around showing it off or proclaiming it, but I don’t deny it.”

Chavela Vargas died in Cuernavaca, Mexico on August 5, 2012. On her recordings her extraordinary voice echoes, with its timbre of a ragged angel, like a voice from the beyond, rebellious, almost mystical, and finally free of the pain and anguish of which it sings to us.