Someone once said, "The best revenge is to outlive your critics." If this is true, then Mexican lesbian chanteuse Chavela Vargas (1919-2012) might be the exemplar of this wisdom, progressing in her lifetime from pariah to icon. She is the subject of the documentary "Chavela," which won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at last year's Frameline, and has been released on DVD by Music Box Films.
Chavela is Mexico's version of our Judy Garland or France's Edith Piaf, a singer "who sang the music of desperation, getting rid of all the embellishments, so all that remained was the wounded soul." Fortunately she had a happier end than Garland and Piaf. Director Catherine Gund, burnt out from the AIDS deaths of friends in the early 1990s, retreated to Mexico, where some lesbian friends introduced her to Chavela's recordings. Gund tracked her down and did two interviews with her in 1991, storing them away but rediscovering them after Chavela died. They are the backbone of the film, along with black-and-white photos, archival footage of performances, and remembrances of Chavela's fans, friends, and lovers. It's a captivating look at this unconventional fighter for freedom and equality in music and sexuality, who inspired both love and hate in her professional and personal lives.
Born Isabel Vargas Lizzano (Chavela was a pet name for Isabel) in Costa Rica, she had a miserable childhood, rejected by both her religious parents as too boyish. Her parents would hide her from guests, and local people would call her horrible names. Her parents divorced, and she went to live with her aunt and uncle. But, having started singing at age 8, she left Costa Rica at 17, for Mexico City, where she hoped she could fulfill her artistic dreams. She sang in the streets, but eventually began playing bars and clubs. She adopted the ranchero, male cowboy singing style (her mentor was Jorge Jose Alfredo, whose many songs she sung), wearing pants underneath a poncho, commenting later that when she tried to dress like a woman, she "looked like a transvestite." She became more macha than many machos, smoking cigars, carrying a pistol, getting drunk on tequila, even singing intoxicated.
Her homosexuality well-known, she had many lovers, including wives of politicians and intellectuals. She had an affair with the artist Frida Kahlo, as well as a fling with actress Ava Gardner. Prejudices at the time prevented her from playing any of the big theaters. In the late 1970s, living in obscurity, she went into a 15-year decline, drinking herself into oblivion. Having slept with the wife of a music producer, her recording contract was canceled. She later claimed a shaman helped her give up booze. She continued to have some long-term lovers, such as human rights lawyer Alicia Elena Perez Duarte, but these relationships were tempestuous, and Chavela could be violent with or without alcohol, even ripping out a piece of Duarte's skull when she pulled on her hair!
She made a spectacular comeback at the El Habito Club in Mexico City in 1991 at age 72, singing for the first time in 12 years, then onto Madrid for a career rebirth in 1992. Her ardent admirer director Pedro Almodovar, who used her music and video in his films, arranged for her to sing in both Paris and at Carnegie Hall in 2003 at 83. Because attitudes about homosexuality had changed, in her last years she was idolized, and at 81, she came out publicly in her autobiography. Her butch nature made her both unwilling and unable to hide who she was. Her wish was to die onstage and she came close to fulfilling it, becoming ill before her final concert in Spain, but returning to die in Mexico at 93. Mexican senator Patricia Jimenez summarized her importance: "For the lesbian community Chavela is the most important woman in Mexican history. She opened the path for us from the moment she started singing in Mexico. There isn't a lesbian in Mexico who doesn't know Chavela, and who doesn't love and adore her."
Chavela was able to convey anguish and sorrow, as if she were speaking only to you. "I offer my pain to people as I bring baggage that I open up onstage." In her final years, "she lived in a continual state of saying goodbye," as if every concert were her last one. She lived a complex, contradictory, and solitary existence despite her love of audiences, and deep inside was lonely, never really recovering from her childhood wounds. The documentary, as a love letter to her, largely succeeds. Yet the emotional power of her voice is talked about rather than shown even with translated English lyrics, which may be due to the dearth of footage available to the filmmakers. Like other groundbreaking artists, she remains an enigma. One senses that, like Garland and Piaf, Chavela was best experienced in live concert, which is why both Gund's interview with her and a live concert performance are two of the standout bonus features. Her thrilling concert debut in Madrid at 73 is inspirational, and conveys the worship of her fans. But it is Chavela's authenticity, her living life on her own terms, that is most stirring. As she commented to Gund, "When you're true to yourself, you win in the end."