Never late: Unwelcome desires and diasporas in Chavela Vargas’ last works

Abstract

Theodor Adorno, and Edward Said after him, theorized late style as a discrepant musical orientation at odds with what is expected, desired, or current. Late work is musical work formulated by an older subject that refuses to retire quietly and with docility. While Adorno and Said discuss Classical-period music, the author is interested in engaging this concept in thinking about the recalcitrant rancheras and boleros of a lesbian, migrant, and aged musical performer of the early twenty-first century, Chavela Vargas (1919–2012). She examines a couple of Vargas’ last works, Cupaima (2006) and ¡Por mi |Culpa! (2010), paying particular attention to how her aesthetic choices continue to de-form the classic repertoire of rancheras and boleros. The entwining of beloved, familiar lyrics and melodies with details that recall invisible and hyper-visible subjects, namely migrants and indigenous communities, result in unexpected, repellent musicality. Inspired by feminist and queer theory, the author examines how her later body of work conveys an unbearable sonic assessment of contemporary struggles of those unwelcome, despised, and outside neo-liberal chronology.

Keywords:

• Chavela Vargas
• late style
• rancheras
• feminisms of color
• music
• aging

Note on contributor

Lorena Alvarado is Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Latina and Latino Studies Program at Northwestern University. She holds a PhD in Culture and Performance from the University of California, Los Angeles (2012).

Notes

1. Playwright, director, actor, entrepreneur, and social activist Jesusa Rodríguez reveals this anecdote after Vargas’ death in an interview with journalist Carmen Aristegui. Moreover, Rodríguez mentions that when she announced Vargas’ upcoming spetacle, people thought it was a joke, and that Rodriguez would merely impersonate her on stage.

2. Founded in 1990 by Argentine-born musician Liliana Felipe and her wife Rodriguez, the cabaret-bar El Habito operated for 15 years and featured hundreds of theater spectacles as well as performances by remarkable singers like Vargas and Tania Libertad. This theater space was part of a larger scene. Contemporary political cabaret in Mexico City has been a bourgeoning enterprise for at least three decades. Inspired by a variety of traditions, including teatro de carpa and German expressionism, Mexican political cabaret continues to thrive with a new generation of artists, including Las Reinas Chulas and Regina Orozco. For more on Jesusa Rodriguez and Liliana Felipe’s work, see Costantino (2001); Franco (1994); Taylor (1993). For more on cabaret in Mexico City, see Gutierrez (2012).

3. As I discuss later in the essay, Vargas arrived in Mexico in the mid-1930s as a young teenager. Yet, it was not until the late 1940s that she sang as a paid hire at the radio station of the Loteria Nacional, the national lottery. Thereafter, in 1961, sponsored by ranchera performer José Alfredo Jiménez, Vargas published two LPs, Noche Bohemia and Chavela Vargas con el cuarteto Lara Foster. She enjoyed success, though not comparable to other idolized singers of the time, performing in Mexico, Cuba, and South America. However, by the 1970s, Vargas’ alcohol addiction took a toll on her career. Her professional resurgence occurred nearly two decades later, in the early 1990s.

4. A number of versions have circulated regarding singer Mercedes Sosa’s alleged remark that “if anyone goes to Mexico, place a rose for me on Chavela Vargas’ tomb;” see Moser (2012).

5. A La Jornada article quotes Vargas: “La intérprete de 93 años, que se siente “de 200″, confesó que le gustaría ser recordada “como una vieja loca” (The 93-year-old singer, who feels like a“200-year-old”, confessed she would like to be remembered as a “vieja loca”). See Olivares (2012).

6. For other discussions on Vargas, see Campos-Fonseca (2010), Ruiz-Alfaro (2010), and Yarbro-Bejarano (1997).

7. For an analysis, inspired by this statement, of Costa Rican exiles, see Campos Fonseca (2010).

8. Vargas (2006).

9. This interview is part of a concert broadcast on Spanish television. The concert took place 1 May 1993, at Madrid’s Sala Caracol: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mnG5cZmgrI.

10. Vargas goes on to state that “they (indigenous peoples) healed me … that may be the reason why I love them so much, for their wisdom;” see Navarro (1996).

11. As Eithne Luibhéd reminds us, queer migration is not a homogeneous process experienced by those that are migrant and queer. It is also not a uniform procedure; it involves a diverse social group and a variety of circumstances that involve yet also go beyond migration and sexuality; see Luibhéd (2008).

12. Ranchera singer Jorge Negrete (1911–53) portrayed the idealized charro in Golden Age Mexican cinema: a light-skinned, tall, imposing gentleman. With his dexterous execution of the ranchera using his classical vocal training, Negrete generated a sound clearly distant from the peasant roots of the genre he ironically represented. Although also classically trained, his contemporary, Lucha Reyes (1906–44) performed rancheras with a grit and technique radically distinct from Negrete and most other commercial performers. Her voice was a recalcitrant instrument that, although often featured in cinema, aroused suspicion and was explained away as a residue of her troubled interiority.

13. In her memoir, Vargas mentions she dressed as the “gente de campo.” Vargas’s choice reflected the cultural nationalism that emerged at the time she debuted professionally. The nueva canción musical movement developed across the Spanish Speaking Americas during the 1960s, its main impulse to protest imperialism, validate indigenous and folk traditions, and promote national autonomy in light of political and commercial influence in Latin America from the United States. The larger context of this initiative was the global Civil Rights movement. Singers from across the continent, including Victor Jara and Violeta Parra from Chile and Oscar Chavez and Amparo Ochoa from Mexico, to name just a very few, were major figures. Although the songs Vargas performed did not have explicit political messages (except perhaps for some traditional corridos in her repertoire) her choice to transform the details of the ranchera in a way that incorporated elements from campesino culture coincide with the revolutionary musical fervor occurring at the time. For more on nueva canción, see Reyes Matta (1998).

14. He further advised Vargas, at the outset of her career, to renounce her ambitions to sing. See Vargas (2002).

15. See “Late Style in Beethoven” in Adorno (2002).

16. The discreet ceremony took place in the late 1990s, in San Luis Potosi. This event granted Vargas with the title of chamana. At the time, she also received a pendant intricately decorated with colorful beads, a piece she wore subsequently in her public performances in addition to her signature jorongo (Notimex 2012).

17. The producer of the album, musician Jorge Reyes (1952–2009), incorporated the techniques of his sui generis musical genre, the tloque nahuaque, into Vargas’ album. Tloque nahuaque (which is also the name of an Aztec deity (Lord of the Near and Far) incorporates harmonic song with corporeally derived music (hands clapping on tights, etc.)

18. Wirikuta, physically located in the mountains of central Mexico, is a sacred site to the Wixárica (Huichol) indigenous people. In their cosmology, Wirikuta is the source of creation and the dwelling of the gods. The Wixárica perform a pilgrimage annually to this revered desert. There, they commune with divinity, aided by the venerated peyote cactus; see Schaeffer (2005, 179). Wirikuta has been, as of the last decade, under constant threat by Canadian mining companies, including First Majestic Silver, that have acquired concessions to operate in the land (Palma 2013).

19. While Vargas’ visual and sounded aesthetics may romanticize lo indigena, I do not dwell on this point in this essay. Instead I labor to demonstrate how Cupaima is a project of critique, one that dwarfs a detrimental politic. She may spread or contribute to idealized notions of indigenous people, but the value of her efforts do not promote a racist agenda or an exploitative cultural economy.

20. Originally written by José Alfredo Jimenez, Mexico’s preeminent ranchera songwriter and performer, the song does refer to a heterosexual affair gone wrong. Its diction, however, as well as Vargas’ early renditions, the unorthodox musicality and the butch image of its performer, alluringly communicated a queer erotic politic. Cupaima’s “Un Mundo Raro” amplifies a different, not immediately gratifying soundscape, addressing an unknown listener without romantic pathos with an undercurrent of rage. Through the performances of Vargas, “Un Mundo Raro” signifies scenarios and subjectivities across marginality as it circulates throughout the twentieth century.

21. Chalchiuhtlicue (the Goddess of the Jade Skirt) is the Aztec goddess of water, storms and childbirth; see Kroger and Granziera (2012). Taken together, Chalchiuhtlicue’s realms point to devastation and renewal. Moreover, Vargas distinguishes herself from, and declares her identity as, Chalchiuhtlicue in the last song of the album, “La Despedida” or Farewell. Thus, the persona of Cupaima is a hybrid that includes this goddess of the Jade Skirt and the weeping woman (La Llorona), for example.

22. One only needs to hear Vargas’ commands to her guitarists during the production process: “Miguel, Juan Carlos, make the introduction longer, so we can display these instruments, so we can hear that lustful thing of the rain forest” (Miguel, Juan Carlos, que la introduction sea mas larga para que se luzcan los instrumentos … pa’ que se oiga esta cosa cachonda de la selva) (Vargas 2006). This self-tropicalization does indeed resonate with the song’s lyrics, originally a poem by Alfonso Camin, a Spanish-Cuban writer and poet. A Caribbean geography, and a tropicalizing imaginary, is implicated in the song in various ways: Mango and sugarcane are staples that sustain major industries in tropical climates. The song also mentions the danzón, a classic dance style of Cuba.

23. In 2006, President Felipe Calderon declared a war on drugs in Mexico. His bellicose approach to resolving drug trafficking, supported morally and financially by the U.S. (Plan Mérida), unleashed a bloody strategy that continues to result in murders, disappearances, and the persecution of social activists as well as contributes to the overall state of rampant institutional impunity, corruption, and injustice. Although Vargas didn’t explicitly discuss the drug war, she would often speak of the situation using oracular language, saying Mexico was currently a sleeping giant that would soon wake up; see Petrich (2007).

24. The ranchera, traditionally evoking sentiments for homeland and countryside, can also be richly evocative of contemporary migration; see Nájera-Ramírez (2003).

25. “La Paloma Juarista” is a contemporary adaptation of “La Paloma,” a habanera composed by the Basque composer Sebastian de Iradier Salaverri (1809–65) in 1859, after a tour of Cuba. De Iradier’s “La Paloma” has since been recorded numerous times throughout the world. The original song expresses the theme of courtship and marriage. In 2006, singer Eugenia Leon performed a variant she penned herself, changing the text to recount a version of Mexican history and critique the legacies of empire and neoliberalism in the country. She performed this version most notably before a teeming Zocalo Square in Mexico City, the year of the contested presidential election of 2006: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYqeJ9mWR_Y

26. In addition, political analyst Mauricio Gebara-Farah sustains that while migrants traveling across Mexico have experienced theft and extortion in the recent past, particularly from drug cartels, those crimes have become increasingly gruesome and go unpunished. According to Gebara-Farah, Mexico’s recent immigration law (Ley de Migracion, launched in 2011) is a “vanguard” statute that is laxly enforced by authorities often complicit with illicit organizations; see Farah-Gebara and Guardarrama (2012).