La Flor de la Canela

Chabuca Granda recorded 7 January 1950 as the date she finished "La flor de la canela", and she gave it its first performance on 21 July that year, her birthday. The waltz was inspired by Victoria Angulo Castillo, an Afro-Peruvian woman from Lima's Rímac district, whom Granda met at the Barranco home of the writer María Isabel Sánchez-Concha. Its best-known line follows her light step from the bridge to the alameda, two landmarks of the old San Lázaro quarter: the Tajamar promenade and a wooden bridge that no longer exists. The title borrows an old Spanish expression that had fallen out of use. To call something the flower of the cinnamon was to praise it as exquisite, the very best; Covarrubias recorded the phrase in his dictionary as early as 1611. Success did not come at once. The trio Los Morochucos made the first recording in the winter of 1953, and it was not well received. In early 1954 the trio Los Chamas recorded it with a more traditional, popular arrangement, and this time it became a great hit, the song that made Granda famous. Since then it has been translated into several languages and sung by an enormous range of voices, from Yma Sumac, Lucha Reyes and Eva Ayllón to Bola de Nieve, Julio Iglesias, Plácido Domingo and Caetano Veloso. Rubén Blades's version earned a Latin Grammy nomination for Record of the Year in 2017. A portrait of one woman walking through an old Lima neighbourhood has become one of the songs that most represents Peru.