by the El Reportero’s news services
Eydie Gorme and husband (1998 photo).Latinos are remembering Eydie Gorme, who died yesterday at age 84, as one of the first entertainers to cross-over to the Spanish-speaking market.
Gorme was better known as the other half of the Steve & Eydie duo but she also made a name for herself as a solo artist in the 50s and 60s with such hits as Blame it on the Bossa Nova and You Need Hands.
For Latinos she is remembered for the 1964 hit “Amor” recorded with the legendary Mexican Trio Los Panchos. Her other Spanish-language hit Sabor a Mi became one of her signature tunes for Latino audiences. Two of her Spanish-language albums Muy Amigos/Close Friends (1977) with Puerto Rican singer Danny Rivera and “La Gorme” (1976) were nominated for Grammys.
Steve Laurence her husband and partner once said “Our Spanish stuff outsell our English recordings, she’s [Gorme] is like a diva to the Spanish world.”
Gorme was at home singing in Spanish since she grew up speaking Spanish with her Sephardic Jewish parents in New York. Her first job after graduating high school in the Bronx was as a Spanish interpreter.
During her multi-decade career Gorme performed with such super-stars as Frank Sinatra, Plácido Domingo, and Andy Williams. She had a three-octave range to her voice and was honored with numerous awards including a Grammy and Emmy. The couple was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
In 2009 Gorme officially retired from the stage.
Gorme died with her partner and husband of 55 years Steve Laurence, their son David and other family members at her side. She died after a brief but undisclosed illness in a Las Vegas hospital. The couple lost their other son Michael at age 23 to a heart condition.
New book looks at traditional Mexican cooking
A group of anthropologists, historians, writers and biologists have published a book about the richness of Mexico’s traditional cuisine, the first cooking to be included on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list.
“It’s really a very important achievement,” Margarita de Orellana, director of publishing house Artes de México, told Efe.
“(We) fought like medieval knights to get traditional Mexican cooking considered something very important and universal in the cultural world,” De Orellana said.
The campaign organized by the Mexican Gastronomical Culture Conservatory, or CCGM, resulted in UNESCO declaring Mexico’s cooking capart of the world’s cultural heritage on Nov. 16, 2010.
The 180-page book honors Mexican cooking, focusing on what it brings to society.
“People don’t pay attention to the richness we have. The idea is to celebrate it,” De Orellana said, adding that the international success of traditional Mexican cooking “had not been bragged about enough.”
The book, titled “Elogio de la cocina mexicana. Patrimonio Cultural de la Humanidad” (Artes de Mexico, 2013), features contributions by 18 specialists, photographs, reproductions of pre-Columbian codexes and paintings by Mexican artists of traditional dishes.
The authors examine different traditional ingredients, such as corn, avocado and cacao, as well as kitchen utensils like the “metate,” a type of stone pestle and mortar.
One of the contributors, historian Miguel Leon-Portilla, wrote a chapter titled “La antigua palabra de nuestros mayores” (The Ancient Word of Our Elders), which discusses “the forms and etiquette of the Aztecs toward food,” De Orellana said.
Artes de Mexico has been working for two decades to shed light on the country’s cultural heritage, publishing several book collections and nearly 100 issues of a magazine that has featured the work of about 600 experts on art, history and popular culture. (Hispanically Speaking News).
