Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa put her rich contralto toward the causes of political struggle, human rights, poetry and melody, in a purposeful career that included international fame and a painful exile.
Her long list of collaborators included Luciano Pavarotti, Joan Baez, Shakira and Sting. She released 40 albums.
“I didn’t choose to sing for people,” she said in a television interview not long before her death on Oct. 4 at 74. “Life chose me to sing.”
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Sosa was born in the northwestern province of Tucuman, into a working-class family of French and Amerindian ancestry. For her Indian blood, she was also affectionately called “La Negra.”
In 1950, at 15, she won a local radio talent contest that helped launch her career, and in the 1960s she became a leading voice of the Nueva Cancion (New Song) movement, which mixed folk music with leftist politics.
Sosa was not a songwriter. Rather, she interpreted the works of others with an astute knack for picking the song of the moment, such as Violeta Parra’s “Gracias a la Vida (Thanks to Life)” and Horacio Guarany’s “Si Se Calla el Cantor (If the Singer is Silenced).”
In 1976, at the takeover of a brutal military dictatorship, Sosa was banned from performing. In 1978, she went into exile in Paris, then Madrid, building her international following.
In 1982, with the dictatorship on the wane, she returned to give a series of homecoming concerts at the Teatro Colon opera house in Buenos Aires, recorded as a two-LP set, Mercedes Sosa en Argentina, one of her most enduring works.
The Rough Guide to World Music most recommends her 1993 album Gracias a la Vida, Sosa’s tribute to Chilean singer/songwriter Parra, and the 1993 compilation 30 Anos, which contains songs from throughout Sosa’s career.
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