Charo performs onstage during the New York Pops’ 40th birthday gala at Carnegie Hall in 2023.
Santiago Felipe/Getty Images
Before she was the queen of “Cuchi-Cuchi,” Charo was an immigrant with big dreams.
A breakthrough Latina entertainer in the United States in the 1960s and ’70s, she surpassed many of those dreams after her marriage to her first husband, bandleader Xavier Cugat, in 1966 brought her to the United States. By 1977, she was a Spanglish pioneer with her mixed-language hit “Dance a Little Bit Closer.”
Charo in Concert: 7 p.m. June 20. $40-$120. Orinda Theatre, 2 Orinda Theater Square, Orinda. www.orindamovies.com
“I was blessed, I was a little girl with a good job in Spanish television when my sister and I come to America,” the performer, born María del Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Baeza in Molina de Segura, Spain, recalls on a recent phone call ahead of her show at the Orinda Theatre on Saturday, June 20.
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At the mention of her adopted country, she breaks out into Leonard Bernstein’s song “America” from his musical “West Side Story,” with a rapid round of “la-la-las” trilling.
Having interviewed the flamenco guitar virtuoso and frequent “Love Boat” guest before, I understand that her mix of songs, jokes (in English and Spanish) and then total seriousness, is Charo’s real language.
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But then her voice drops as she discusses the current fear many Spanish-speaking immigrants are living in due to ongoing U.S. Immigrant Customs Enforcement raids ordered by the Trump administration.
Charo attends a Mercy for Animals event in 2024. The entertainer comes to the Bay Area June 20 for concert at the Orinda Theatre.
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“I cannot even tell you the suffering and the scaredness of these beautiful people that come here with just a dream,” says Charo. “‘I just really pray that something happens so they don’t suffer no more. When you come to America, everybody come with a dream, ‘I’m going to do it, I’m going to make it.’
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“In my case, I was so lucky, la niña mimada — that means ‘lucky little bitch.’ … Mi abuela said, ‘That girl was born with a star glued to her ass.’”
A call with Charo is like a one woman variety show, with lots of enthusiastic exclamations. It’s no wonder she’s considered a gay icon, as evidenced by her cameo appearance in the RuPaul drag comedy “Stop! That! Train!,” now in theaters.
“RuPaul is my buddy,” Charo says of the drag megastar. “He’s one of the greatest entertainers ever, and he opened a lot of doors in a way like I did.”
Speaking of legendary entertainers, for anyone who hasn’t seen Charo perform live, allow me to borrow this Charoism: She’ll put bumps on your goose.
Her energy when dancing and singing seem boundless, boosted by the workouts and healthy diet she shows off on her prolific Instagram account. Charo’s hands move as rapidly as her accent in the flamenco guitar portion of the night. But she’s equally willing to poke fun of herself, often making her larger-than-life persona the punchline to any joke.
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Charo performs at the International Dance Music Awards in Miami Beach in 2009.
Logan Fazio/WireImage via Getty
After my interview with Charo in 2019, I told her concert presenter that I had received numerous emails doubting the age for the star that was published. For years, Charo deliberately added years to her age in her early interviews to make the age gap between herself and the 66-year-old Cugat seem smaller. (She was a teenager at the time they started their relationship.)
That same year, the night of her performance, Charo acknowledged the mystery about her age from the stage, saying that word had gotten back to her doubting the 1951 birth year now legally recognized.
“They say, ‘That’s not how old Charo is, I saw her perform in World War II,’” she joked between songs, before adding, “I don’t even know how the hell old I am.”
For the record, she’s now 75. But at any age, retirement isn’t a consideration for the performer. Touring, she says, was her way back to the world after the suicide of her husband, Kjell Rasten, on Feb. 18, 2019.
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Rasten had been suffering from months of misdiagnosis before being treated for bullous pemphigoid, a skin disease that causes painful blisters. After 10 months on a high dose of the steroid prednisone, Charo has recounted, he was taken off the drug and silently spiraled into depression, leading to his death.
Charo attends Project Angel Food’s Lead with Love event in 2024.
Michael Tullberg/Getty Images
In the seven years since, Charo has used her Instagram account and her performances as a way of helping others dealing with issues around suicide or bullous pemphigoid. Through comedy and music, she wants to remind people that life is worth living.
For Charo, it’s also a source of strength.
“I love the people. They are oxygen for me,” she says. “I love live performance because this, to me, is a party. I don’t take it for granted.”
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It also thrills her that her audiences range in age from Gen Z fans who discovered her on social media to people who have followed her for decades.
“They are interested in the past, they’re interested in how we survived before artificial intelligence,” said Charo of a group of Pepperdine University students she recently performed for in Malibu.
“When I’m alone, I feel like a cucaracha with diarrhea,” she continues. “Instead of being scared of the audience when I’m performing, I get the energy from the audience.
“They took me around the world, and ‘Cuchi Cuchi’ has been my passport.”