Juana María de la Concepción Méndez Guzmán, commonly referred as Conny Méndez (11 April 1898 – 26 November 1979) was a Venezuelan composer, singer, writer, caricaturist, actress and metaphysicist.
Biography
Her parents were the poet Eugenio Mendez y Mendoza and Lastenia Guzman. Her schooling was in Caracas and New York City. In New York, Mendez studied paint in the Art Student's and music in the New School of Music.
During the 1920s she returned to Caracas, and collaborated as a writer and caricaturist in different magazines and newspapers, including El Nuevo Diario, Elite and Nosotras. These cartoons were collected in the work Bistury: Album de caricaturas (1931).
In 1946 Mendez founded the Christian Metaphysics movement in Venezuela, under the influence of Count Saint-Germain, the European occultist.
During the first years of the 1950s, she worked as an actress in "Camas separadas" of Terence Rattingam, directed by Horacio Peterson at the Caracas Theater Club. In 1955, she published her autobiography titled "Memorias de una loca" (Memories of a crazy woman) and in 1967 her book "Del guayuco al quepis".
However, it was in the field of composition and musical interpretation, where she did her more fruitful work. Her folk and popular music included more than 40 compositions, like "Chucho y Ceferina" (A couple of natives), "La Negrita Marisol" (A creole girl), "Venezuela Habla Cantando" (Venezuela speaks like singing), and many others.
She inspired
Chabuca Granda
María Isabel Granda Larco (3 September 1920 – 8 March 1983), better known as Chabuca Granda, was a Peruvian singer and composer. She created and interpreted a vast number of Creole Waltz, Criollo waltzes with Afro-Peruvian rhythms.
Granda's " ...
, a Peruvian composer who wrote songs dedicated to her country and to nature when, at that time, in Peru, "people mainly sang to broken hearts” she said. These are songs that never go out of fashion. The miracle of the popular song is that different countries perform it in their own way.”
The last years of her life were exclusively dedicated to the study of Christian metaphysics. In 1977 she published a series of works about this topic, among them: "Metafisica al alcance de todos" (Metaphysics for Everyone) (1977) and "Misterios develados" (Unveiled Mysteries) (1979) and "El librito azul" (The blue booklet). She was born in
Caracas
Caracas ( , ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas (CCS), is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the northern p ...
and died in
Miami
Miami is a East Coast of the United States, coastal city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County in South Florida. It is the core of the Miami metropolitan area, which, with a populat ...
, Florida, United States.
Family
* Joseph Rincones (ex-husband)
* Donald Rincones (son)
* Alexandra Rincones (granddaughter)
* Daniel Rincones (grandson)
* Antonieta Rincones (great-granddaughter)
Bibliography
*Metafísica al Alcance de Todos (English title: Metaphysics for Everyone)
*Te Regalo lo que Se Te Antoje
*El Maravilloso Número 7
*¿Quién es y Quién Fue el Conde de Saint Germain?
*Piensa Lo Bueno y Se Te Dará
*Metafísica 4 en 1 (English title: Power through Metaphysics)
*El Nuevo Pensamiento
*¿Qué es la Metafísica?
*El Librito Azul
*Un Tesoro Más para Ti
*La Voz del "Yo Soy"
*La Carrera de Un Átomo
*Numerologìa 22
See also
*
Venezuela
Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...
*
Venezuelan music
Several styles of the traditional music of Venezuela, such as Salsa music, salsa and Venezuelan merengue, merengue, are common to its Caribbean neighbors. Perhaps the most typical Venezuelan music is joropo, a rural form which originated in th ...
*
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of ...
*
Rubén Cedeño
References
External links
Metafísica by Conny MéndezConny Méndez's Biography in YouTube.comConny MéndezPage of the movement she founded (Metafísica Renovada Ray Sol)
1898 births
1979 deaths
Venezuelan composers
20th-century Venezuelan women singers
Venezuelan folk singers
Venezuelan women writers
Singers from Caracas
20th-century Venezuelan women composers
Venezuelan emigrants to the United States
{{Venezuela-writer-stub