Cecilia (12)

Chilean pop singer Cecilia Pantoja Levi aka Cecilia "La Incomparable" (b. Tomé, 21 October 1943 - died 24 July 2023) belongs to the "Nueva Ola" music movement of young South Americans who incorporated rock 'n' roll into their sound. While the peers of her generation limited themselves to dubbing hit songs in the United States or, at best, releasing light pop rock, Cecilia acquired her own personality with a diverse catalogue of songs that incorporated sounds from the Latin and European musical traditions.. Cecilia began singing at the end of the '50s in Los De Tomé, a melodic quartet. After the recording of their first and only single album for the RCA label, at the beginning of the 60's,the group dissolved. Cecilia went solo with a vocal support group, Los Singers. She signed to Odeon records in 1962 to record her first solo work, a single and album that, even then, at the height of the New Wave, seems irreconcilable: Italian tango ("One of so many") and rock'n roll performed in the native language ("I wanna live"). These were the foundations of the first great mass revolt generated in Chile around a young singer. A couple of years after her solo debut, driven by Italian songs such as "Tango de las rosas" (1963), "Aleluya" (1964) and "Baño de mar a medianoche" (1964), Cecilia gained a popularity hitherto unsuspected for a young singer. In its own way, the Cecilia phenomenon in Chile was similar to the one that the Beatles caused in England and the United States. In the years of her reign (1963-1965), she led the sales and popularity lists of the press and radio; her fans flocked to the radio stations, theatres, and stadiums where her concerts were held; and her name led several of the main tours organized by the country in those years. In 1968, with falling sales, moved to CBS/Philips and started recording songs that would give her a more adult profile. In the 1970s she became part of an emerging "underground" movement, which worked in small night-time venues where the bohemia of the Chilean capital met almost clandestinely, and from where her image soon began to grow as a living legend though that did not translate in sales. Subsequently her songs were featured in a popular play, she was the subject of a biography and the attention made her prominent again. The voice no longer has the musical richness of then, but it retained the drama. At the end of the day, what matters to his public is to see and listen to “the incomparable”. Please, do not confuse with Spanish pop singer Cecilia (6) signed by Philips also in the 1960s.