squalling rock music. She reunited with exotica king Les Baxter, whom she had worked with on Voice Of The Xtabay, and the result was one of the craziest, most wonderful records in history – Miracles.
The sessions got underway in September ’71 at Western Recording Studios in Hollywood, and were far from easy. Always a firebrand, Yma and Baxter frequently clashed; reprising the fights they shared during the recording of Voice Of The Xtabay. “He wanted credit for EVERYTHING,” Yma said in 2006. “All the improvisations on my records were my idea. Mr Baxter wanted credit for all my success. Outrageous!” Their path was no smoother on Miracles. “Another bad experience” she recalled. Les Baxter, for his part, said in ’95 that Yma was a “very volatile person, very temperamental, very fiery. She was, ‘I love you! You are marvellous! I’ll kill you!’ All in one paragraph.”
Despite having Baxter’s name on the cover as producer, his role was as bandleader and Miracles was actually produced by Robert Covais. The band was comprised of Chuck Cowan on guitar, his brother Roger Cowan on bass, Richard Person on organ, and Skippy Switzer drumming. Baxter wrote the songs for Miracles (with the exception of ‘El Condor Pasa’) and, although he apparently told Yma they were composed specifically for her, five had appeared before on his album African Blue, released in ’67.
But whether they were new or recycled, Yma and the band turned these songs into unique creatures indeed. Throughout the album, Yma doesn’t sing a word; instead she navigates her vocals through the full spectrum of abstract expression. There are guttural growls, operatic screeches, playful hums and strident vocal cacophonies, often all in one song. Yma’s range, once rumoured to spread five octaves, had dimmed a little with age, with her upper register in particular sounding slightly stifled. Yet this only improves her warbling on Miracles – her vocals are now more eccentric, like a clown with only half his face painted. The band is up to Yma’s challenge, as they chuck every rock trick and style devised in the last decade straight at her. There’s the acid guitar of ‘Remember’, the sunshine pop of ‘Medicine Man’, the organ stomp of ‘Zebra’ and the progressive jazz-funk cover of ‘El Condor Pasa’. Although Miracles can also be soothing and slinky, it’s only a temporary reprieve until Yma and the tempest behind her let
On its ’72 release, Baxter’s insistence on being named as producer came back to bite. There were some legal rumblings about the credit and London Records, fearing litigation, pulled the record in the US shortly after it reached the shops. However, it gained a release in other countries including the UK, although (with the exception of an Italian 45 of ‘Medicine Man’) no singles were released from it. As always with records that scissor-kick over genres and dare to try something new, Miracles met with a lukewarm critical reception and a poor sales response. Rock fans didn’t want to buy a record by a middle- aged woman whose ’50s records lurked in their parents vinyl stash. Those same parents, if they even heard Miracles, would
rip again. ‘Magenta Mountain’ is the classic example; restrained and relatively genteel at the beginning, it slowly builds into a crescendo like a lobster being boiled. Adding further to the weirdness of the album is the heavy use of reverb, echo and overdubs. Not only is there one wailing and crying Yma, there are three or four, all convincingly evoking a descent into madness.
The malformed cherry on top of this freak- cake is the cover. Unlike Yma’s earlier albums, where she was presented as a glamorous Incan icon, Miracles looks like it was knocked up by a pretentious teenager who’d once caught a glimpse of a Dali. It features a stylised, golden Yma emerging from a canal, surrounded by a gigantic floating guitar amongst various examples of Greek architecture and electronic musical equipment. Yma, expecting a reprise of her ’50s artwork, despised it.
have likely found it far too bizarre next to the exotic-yet-familiar terrain of Sumac’s earlier work.
Yma did not make any more albums and, the odd one-off project aside, barely recorded again, preferring to tour and make personal appearances. Miracles has not been formally reissued, but there is a remastered version of the album’s sessions with two bonus tracks (‘Parade’ and ‘Savage Rock’) available as the CD Yma Rocks! Yma’s wig-out is of its time yet so far out of it that it could well have been created by a miracle itself. Maybe the cover got it right after all, with the ancient granite of Greece rubbing up against amps on overdrive, hinting at the kind of crazy, blunt fusion of time and space that Miracles achieved.
Throughout her career, Yma put her natural talent to majestic use. Whether in her ’50s grooves or the rock excesses of Miracles, she cleverly fused authentic Peruvian culture, the myth of the exotic Inca and contemporary pop. The respect she earned for her instinctual vocal feel was second only to her reputation for obstinacy and caprice. Yma Sumac’s death means the sad loss of one of the most vibrant voices and unique personalities of all time.
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