Yma Sumac
Fuego del Ande (The Right Stuff 32681)

Fuego Del Ande begins with a rhythm section that sounds like a Frankie & Annette movie set in Tijuana, with Yma coming in full-throated sounding much like the amateur soul singers you see on "Night at the Apollo." It's one of the fakest sounding things I've ever heard, yet infectious and wonderful.

The rest of the album continues along the same merry path, more or less sticking to Yma's "pop" side, if you can identify what side that is, exactly. On this album, Yma and musical director Moises Vivanco offer up a batch of traditional and popular South American songs, "paying tribute to their heritage."

The liner notes describe Vivanco thusly: "Peruvian-born, his knowledge of native rhythms and instruments is extensive and first-hand." I've always thought it was weird how the entertainment industry (as well as the literary world) bestow automatic credibility on people just because of where they were born, or where they lived, or what war they fought in. Someone should commission me to write an album of traditional American songs … I'd get a big laugh out of the potential for misrepresentation in that project.

My point is that this album has about as much to do with "traditional South American folk songs and popular music" as Ricky Nelson did to "American roots music and rock'n'roll." Now, I've never bought into the idea that Yma Sumac was actually "Amy Camus" from New Jersey – I accept that she was born in Peru and that her weirdness could not be faked.

But just as Americans consider Taco Bell hot sauce "hot" and Robert De Niro "a good actor," they've always taken their international music in highly diluted recipes like David Byrne's "Brazilian" music and Big Bird's "ornithological" music. (?)

Fuego Del Ande features plenty of ragtime piano and boogie-woogie bass, masquerading as Peruvian pop. But it's all good, no worries. Sinatra's Jobim album was good, so was Willie Nelson's Stardust, and so was Barbra Streisand's Christmas album.

The presence of the electric guitars (which in some points recall the Ventures and even "The Munsters Theme" on "Mi Palomita" and a couple others) are the key to the inauthentic feel of the album, but also keep things afloat in a rollicking way that you would never get from a Smithsonian or Nonesuch Explorer album.

Aside from the amazing "Virgenes Del Sol," which is probably my favorite Yma song besides "El Condor Pasa" on Miracles, there are no big standout tracks, but the whole album is worthwhile and entertaining.

It's probably my least favorite Yma Sumac album of the six or so I've heard, but still a good album. I wish EMI or The Right Stuff would put out a proper Yma compilation, but that'll probably never happen because it would almost certainly kill potential sales of the individual albums. They marketed these well, convincing people that they should own and would listen regularly to more than one Yma Sumac album.

Truthfully, her voice is so unique that I do listen regularly to more than one, though I can't say I listen to any of them with great frequency. A few years ago I had a compilation on Pair Records called The Spell of Yma Sumac which had all her best songs in one place, but which was terribly packaged – time for someone to do a good collection (even a 2-disc would be nice) with great packaging and clean sound like on these reissues.

The individual albums reissued by The Right Stuff are Motown in length (they could easily fit two on one disc), so how about a good slimline 2-disc Yma compilation? It kills me to have five slots in the ever-tighter shelves of my CD collection devoted to five extremely similar albums that could easily be compiled more effectively.

But then, who's kidding who, look at all those Kiss albums and try to tell me that CD collection makes the most of all its alloted space. Sure, I listen to Rock and Roll Over ALL the time!!

Loud Bassoon rating scale

Review by Serena Pustule