Biography:

Mireya Cecilia Ramona Pantoja Levi 1 ( Tome , October 21 , 1943 – Santiago , July 24, 2023), 1 2 3 better known as Cecilia the Incomparable , 2 or simply Cecilia , was a Chilean singer-songwriter of Jewish origin , representative of the new wave in the 1960s . She won the international contest of the VI Viña del Mar International Song Festival in 1965 . In 2016, she was awarded thePresident of the Republic National Music Award .

Review

Cecilia bursts in as a soloist at the height of the New Wave , rising towards the mid-1960s as the biggest youth star of the time, although her style and repertoire do not fully respond to the mold of the movement. While the peers of her generation limited themselves to dubbing hit songs in the United States, Cecilia acquired her own personality with a diverse catalog of songs ascribed to the Latin and European musical tradition.

He tackled various musical styles, including bolero , Italian tango , mambo , cha-cha-chá , and rock and roll . Her music producer and then artistic director of the Odeón label, Rubén Nouzeilles, considered Cecilia unique among the musicians of her generation. Hence the name of her second solo long play, La incomparable (1965), a title by which she would be known in the following decades.

Early years

Mireya Cecilia Ramona Pantoja Levi was born in Tomé on October 21, 1943 at 10 pm. She was the daughter of Fernando Pantoja Rubilar and Luisa Levi. Ella 4 Ella She was the youngest of the family made up of her brothers Marietta and Fernando. She completed her Humanities studies at the Liceo de Tomé. 4

She was called simply as Cecilia, because she was always called that by her family and friends. 4

Cecilia started singing at the end of the 1950s in Los de Tomé , a melodic quartet originally formed by three brothers named González and whose name is attributed to the city of origin of its members. After the recording of a first and only single disc for the RCA label, at the beginning of the 1960s the group dissolved, and her main voice was released alone together with a vocal support group that they baptized The Singers . With them he arrived at the Odeón studios in 1962 to record his first solo work, a single album that, by adding its two sides, combines two different musical styles: an Italian tango ( Uno de tantos ) and rock and roll performed in the native language ( I wanna live ) .

A couple of years after her solo debut, driven by Italian songs such as Tango de las rosas (1963), “Aleluya”, and “Baño de mar a midnight”, both from 1964 , Cecilia achieved popularity. Between the years 1963 and 1965, she led the sales and popularity lists of the press and radio; Her fans flocked to the radio stations, theaters and stadiums where her concerts were held. Her name also led several of the main musical tours organized by the country in those years.

Live charisma and controversy

Her stage display was brash and provocative, with a musical catalog that covered several musical genres , which would make her a symbol of sexual emancipation by transgressing manners, conventions, and customs. In his participation in the VI Viña del Mar International Song Festival in 1965 , he competed with the song ” Como una ola “, 2 becoming involved in a sharp controversy with the building authorities of the time by violating the recommendation not to interpret his characteristic taquito kiss, a scenic gesture inspired by soccer technique and considered inappropriate to be performed by a woman at the time. She responded with grimaces, mocking gestures and the occasional taquito kiss.

His first music producer and then artistic director of the Odeón label, Rubén Nouzeilles, had a great influence on his musical and artistic style, who did not agree with the presumed ease of the New Wave. His musical training was so broad as to include productions by dissimilar musicians, such as Lucho Gatica , his friend De él Violeta Parra and Los Huasos Quincheros . Cecilia’s recordings that bear Nouzeilles’ signature were definitely the most significant of her career, and were characterized by rich orchestrations arranged by Odeón staff directors such as Luis Barragán and Valentín Trujillo .

It is symptomatic that the beginning of Cecilia’s artistic decline coincided with her moving away from the Odeon. Concerned by the progressive loss of popularity that she experienced since the second half of the decade at the hands of new youthful idols, among them José Alfredo Fuentes , in 1968 she decided to move to the CBS/Philips label and start recording songs that would give her career a more adult and international profile. That’s how she was from that year and until 1970 she proposed progressive versions for songs by Violeta Parra ( Gracias a la vida ) and Víctor Jara ( Plegaria a un labrador ). But without a doubt the most significant record of this period was Compromiso, a ballad with a rock accent that three decades later would be rescued by Javiera y Los Imposibles . At her time, however, the success of this stylistic experiment was unsatisfactory, and her results led the singer to try her luck with all the means available to her.

After editing his first and only LP for CBS/Philips, Gracias a la vida (1970), he tried without luck to start a career in Mexico and on his return, in the midst of the Popular Unity government , he founded his own record label, Chía Producciones, for which he recorded a few songs of a melancholic and romantic nature that had little diffusion. It was his last major attempt to regain lost glory.

Bohemian legend

The coup d’état of September 11, 1973 surprises her singing in nightclubs and nightclubs in the capital, and since then, those stages will become a refuge for her artistic survival. Unlike other singers of her generation, the ex-queen of the New Wave will remain outside the official and massive distribution circuits. In the underground of the depressed national bohemia, Cecilia will begin to rise as a legend for a new generation that will begin to value her as a cult figure.

The first sign in this regard was delivered by the theater director Vicente Ruiz, who in 1984 used songs by Cecilia to musicalize a version of the play Hipólito , which was staged at the El Trolley theater. What connection did Vicente Ruiz see between Cecilia and a Greek tragedy? «She –he declared in December 1984 to the Wikén supplement of the newspaper El Mercurio– is like someone majestic who disappeared into the darkness of anonymity due to a possible self-destruction. All her songs are about love; but of a fatal love, impossible to specify. She is a woman who marginalized herself.”

Although Hipólito’s production had a very marginal impact, it was the starting point for Cecilia to be revalued among new generations.

Then there were a series of concerts by the former queen of the New Wave (one of them sold out at the Teatro Caupolicán ), with her former artistic director, Leo García. Then Rubén Nouzeilles released two compiled albums in digital format, La incomparable (1995) and Un día te diré (1997), whose sales totaled more than 100,000 units, revealing the popular roots of his songs.

In the same period , Cecilia, a queen, a myth , was released , a play about Cecilia’s life that touched on the subject of alcoholism and homosexuality, feeding the myth about her figure. 5 The unauthorized biography Cecilia, la vida en llamas (2002, Planeta), by Cristóbal Peña, would contribute to this. After remaining on sale for a month, the book was seized by order of the First Criminal Court of Santiago, due to a criminal case that sought to evaluate possible insults with advertising accused by the author herself in a lawsuit. 6A year and a half later, the case was closed without the court ruling on the merits of the claim, because the abandonment of the procedure was decreed, a decision that was later confirmed by the Santiago Court of Appeals. 7

For much of her musical career, Cecilia Pantoja Levi ―like all the singers of her generation― limited herself to managing her musical heritage from the 1960s.

Artists like Mon Laferte 8 and Denisse Malebrán have declared themselves influenced by Cecilia.

 

Credits:

Wikipedia