Peruvian singer Yma Sumac in the 1950’s. She boasted an extraordinary five-octave range and claimed to be descended from the last Inca emperor. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Few popular singers have boasted a five-octave range. Even fewer have claimed they were descended from the last Inca emperor and schooled in song by “the creatures of the forest”.
And fewer still have appeared in a Charlton Heston film that helped inspire Indiana Jones, toured the USSR, been namechecked in Vanessa Paradis’ Joe le Taxi, won a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and been adopted as an LGBTQ+ icon.