Nacha Guevara

Who is Nacha Guevara?

Nacha Guevara is an Argentine singer-songwriter, dancer and actress from Mar de Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Trained as a dancer and actress, she discovered by chance a career as a singer becoming a symbol around 1968 in the avant-garde movement at Instituto Di Tella in Buenos Aires, the preeminent pioneer center for visual and theater experimentation at that time. She was a controversial cult figure in the underground movement and as a singer-songwriter in the "cafe-concert" scene, singing tunes and parodies by Boris Vian, George Brassens, Tom Lehrer, Nicolas Guillén and argentinian writers like Julio Cortázar, Jorge de la Vega, Ernesto Schoo and others.

At the beginning of 1970, one of her pivotal works was Nacha sings Benedetti, where she and Alberto Favero, musical partner and at that time husband, adapted some of the most famous poems of Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti to music.

In 1973 she obtained great recognition by critics and audiences with a big revue named Las mil y una Nachas. Nacha Guevara exiled herself first to Peru then Mexico in 1974, threatened by the Triple A death squad. She attempted to make a comeback in 1975 with a new version of Las mil y una Nachas. The show was never performed. After the dress rehearsal prior to the opening night, a bomb destroyed the theater, killing a member of the crew and forcing her to flee the country once more.