Imelda Miller, another of the musical victims of Raúl Velasco’s fury

The Ibero-American Song Grand Prize, better known as the Festival from OTI, was the space from which many figures emerged who today are artists of recognized international prestige: Gualberto Castro, Denise de Kalafe, Eugenia León, Marcos Llunas, were some of the winners. Stars such as Emmanuel, Yoshio, Napoleón, José José, Marisol, Camilo Sesto, Ricardo Arjona, Paul Anka, Imelda Miller and dozens more also appeared.

The initial objective of the OTI Festival was to generate a process of Ibero-American unity through the exchange of cultural expressions, especially musical ones, and recognize the composers with original songs. This is how the rules dictated it and that was what the contestants adhered to, but when the singer and actress Imelda Miller found out about a compatriot who was breaking the rules, he looked for Raul Velasco to let you know. Unfortunately, he did not receive his support and faced the most fearsome side of the powerful driver..

The Mexican singer Imelda Miller was an interpreter of many composers and winner of the OTI Festival in Brazil (Photo: Pedro González Castillo/LatinContent/Gettyimages).

Imelda Miller, “the singer from Mexico”, is recognized for her excellent voice. Pride of Yucatan, land of troubadours and musical talents, singing and composition, she is part of an artistic lineage among which are Armando Manzanero, Aleks Syntek, Sergio Esquivel, to name a few.

An aunt discovered her and recommended her with the Copacabana women’s group with which she began her career. The first time she was called to the Blanquita Theater, she performed with the song ‘Granada’ with which she also triumphed, thanks to the arrangements by maestro Miguel Pous. Then from her began her hits “Una noche no”, “Corazón vagabundo”, “I’m going to raffle my heart”, among others that projected her to different stages in the country, remembers the columnist Jesús Butrón.

In her stage as an actress, Miller worked in melodramas such as the unforgivable y I don’t believe in menalso intervened in the tapes The good neighbors of Yucatan, the forbidden house y Neutron vs. Karate Killers.

But without a doubt, it was the OTI where many were captivated with his musical talent, not only in Mexico, but throughout Latin America. Although she only won once, every time she ran she was always one of the favorites. What happened? She points to only one person: Raúl Velasco.

Velasco was one of the most famous conductors of Mexican television with his program always on sunday. Other shows such as Festival Acapulco, let’s play sing and, of course, the OTI Festival.

For years—before and after he died—stories of how he cut careers short, belittled and humiliated artists have been rife. Miller is among them.

“Raúl always did many things to me. In his festivals he sent me to the last one, not when going out, but in the voting, how did he do it? I think he put his hands in there,” said the singer for the program The minute my destiny changed.

To get to the international program, they first had to get a pass in the national phase. According to the singer’s account, Felipe Gil (today Felicia Garza) would have violated one of the rules of the local contest, which was that all the songs had to be original, without having been performed, broadcast, televised, or edited prior to the contest, and hers had been programmed twelve times on station XEW. “I went, I got the evidence. He (Raúl Velasco) knew that the song was sung and edited, he was listening to it and said ‘it’s not'”.

This episode allegedly caused the driver to bother to put his foot down whenever he could, “the first festival he did in Mexico City in 1970 (national phase of the International Song Festival, antecedent of the OTI) I sang ‘En mí’ and ‘Tierra de mi tierra’, were two songs, with wonderful arrangements by Eduardo Magallanes and Mario Molina Montes, Jorge Ortega; they were great composers and he gave the award to Paco Chanona, he won first place with a bolero-mambo (‘I give you my dreams’)”.

But in 1973, Miller managed to be the representative of Mexico in the contest with ‘Qué alegre va María’ by Esquivel and obtains first place in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. After this, first place was far away.

“He never let me win,” said the artist, even when he presented great works, according to his criteria. “I put in a very beautiful song of mine, my composition of lyrics and music, ‘The house will miss’, a rhymed poem; Gave me seventh place, seventh place, seventh place, ‘the cabalistic seven’I was told”.

Another of the programs that Velasco devised was the Ranchera Music Festival within always on sunday. Miller also participated and again came the disappointment. “Mine was a very fine, very beautiful, well-rhymed song, lyrics and music and musical arrangement, it left me in second place. María de Lourdes left it in third place, it had a non-song, ‘Atrás del sol'”.

He let me take second place with a song of mine too, ‘Jilguero sings goldfinch’ which was aiming for first place; he gave it to a drunken song (‘A songbook cried’), those were the songs that were brilliant to him.Imelda Miller

“Do you know the damage that people like that do to you? Apart from that, he dedicated himself to cooling me down. He gave me the programs he had and never called me back”lament.

Although the relationship with Velasco did not end in the best way, Imelda did not seem to be intimidated: she is close to six decades into her career and was part of the Celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the OTI festival in November 2022.

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