Now Showing: "La Molina" by Yma Sumac

The singer Yma Sumac sparked an unusual kind of controversy when she burst upon the world's music scene in the early 1950s; owing to the unbelievably exotic pedigree she offered as her own (namely that she was an Inca princess descended from Atahualpa) it was oft-rumoured that she was actually Amy Camus* even though they could never quite agree on the spurious place of her birth - some said Brooklyn, others Detroit, still others offered somewhere in Canada.

For the record, she was born in Peru on this day in 1922, although her name at birth - Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chavarri del Castillo - never would have fit on the sleeve of a 45 rpm record, necessitating the name change.  Yma Sumac died in November 2008.

*Yma Sumac backwards, guh!
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