[3][7] Her parents were the civic leader[7] Sixto Chávarri (Cajamarca)[1][3] and the schoolteacher[7] Emilia Castillo (Ancash).

[3] Growing up with the air of the Andean mountains, imitating the birds and other animals,[7] she was "unintentionally making" her huge vocal range.

These early recordings for the Odeon label featured composer Moisés Vivanco's troupe Compañía Peruana de Arte, of 16 Peruvian dancers, singers, and musicians.

[27] She was discovered by Les Baxter[28] and signed by Capitol Records in 1950, at which time her stage name became Yma Sumac.

Her first album, Voice of the Xtabay, launched a period of fame that included performances at the Hollywood Bowl and Carnegie Hall.

A second tour took her to the Far East: Persia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, Thailand, Sumatra, the Philippines, and Australia.

Sumac appeared in a Broadway musical, Flahooley, in 1951, as a foreign princess who brings Aladdin's lamp to an American toy factory to have it repaired.

Flahooley closed quickly, but the Capitol recording of the show continues to sell well as a cult classic, in part because it also marked the Broadway debut of Barbara Cook.

Apparently due to financial difficulties, Sumac and the original Inka Taky Trio went on a world tour in 1960, which lasted for five years.

The group was unable to attain any success; however, their participation in the South American Music Festival in Carnegie Hall was reviewed positively.

In March 1990, she played the role of Heidi in Stephen Sondheim's Follies, in Long Beach, California, her first attempt at serious theater since Flahooley in 1951.

[40] With the resurgence of lounge music in the late 1990s, Sumac's profile rose again when the song "Ataypura" was featured in the Coen Brothers film The Big Lebowski.

The song "Gopher Mambo" was used in the films Ordinary Decent Criminal, Happy Texas, Spy Games, and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, among others.

Sumac is also mentioned in the lyrics of the 1980s song "Joe le taxi" by Vanessa Paradis, and her album Mambo!

On May 6, 2006, Sumac flew to Lima, where she was presented the Orden del Sol award by Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo and the Jorge Basadre medal by the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.

[42] Sumac died on November 1, 2008, aged 86, at an assisted living home in Los Angeles, California, nine months after being diagnosed with colon cancer.

[44] On September 20, 2022, a new memorial bust statue was unveiled at her final resting place, at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, in honor of what would have been her 100th birthday.

[2] The origin of the rumor may plausibly be traced to a cleverly formulated review by influential jazz critic Leonard Feather, who used literary device, in a December 1950 column, to suggest that Sumac's voice was in fact a theremin, that Xtabay—or Axterbay—was Pig Latin for Baxter, and that the name of the singer was Amy Camus, who took Serutan (a contemporary laxative: "natures" spelled backwards).