When the singer Chavela Vargas began performing in Mexico, in the 1950s, she dressed as a woman. But "it didn't work." She thought she "looked like a transvestite," she would say decades later, in an ...

When American filmmaker Catherine Gund met Mexican ranchera singer Chavela Vargas in 1991, both women were at major crossroads in their lives. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access ...

Mexican singer Chavela Vargas became a queer icon, had purported dalliances with Frida Kahlo and Ava Gardner, challenged gender stereotypes in her country and forged an impressive career in bohemian ...

Androgynous long before it was stylish, Chavela Vargas burst onto the Mexican music scene in 1942 in a long braid, trousers and a poncho, tequila bottle in hand and singing like a man. The captivating ...

A legend of Latin American song has died. Chavela Vargas was a cultural icon across the Spanish-speaking world, with a voice that redefined notions of beauty and an attitude that brashly bent gender ...

At the peak of her initial popularity during the 1950s, Mexican singer Chavela Vargas wore trousers and a poncho as she huskily crooned lost-love ballads to women. Yet she didn’t announce that she was ...

Her career began in the late 1940s, when she performed highly-emotional “ranchera” torch songs, accompanying herself on guitar, in small Acapulco bars of questionable repute. A friend of Diego Rivera, ...

Early on in the documentary “Chavela,” a cabaret owner describes the voice of Chavela Vargas: “She wasn’t a little fountain. She was more like a tremendous canyon.… She sounded as if she’d been born ...

AMT has announced a preview of their upcoming show Becoming Chavela, a musical play about iconic Mexican singer Chavela Vargas which will run in Guadalajara, Mexico in June before returning to AMT ...

Maria Isabel Anita Carmen de Jesus Vargas Lizano, popularly known as Chavela Vargas, was only 17 when she moved from her native Costa Rica to Mexico. Here she found a place where she could cultivate ...