Mercedes Sosa - More Than A Song. Anette Christensen

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       STARTING IN Chile under the influence of Violeta Parra and Víctor Jara, the New Song Movement (Nueva Canción Movimiento) spreads in the sixties and seventies all over Latin America. It is associated with revolutionary music because its musicians aim to unite with their listeners in a demand for democracy and social justice, hoping to achieve social and political change through music. The lyrics put issues such as poverty, imperialism, democracy, human rights, and religious freedom into the spotlight and relate to marginalized people by putting words to their struggles and their hopes. The song “Plegaria a un Labrador” (A Prayer to the Farmer), by Víctor Jara, for instance, deals with the need for agricultural reforms, giving farmers the right to own the land they cultivate.

      Such ballads, loaded with political messages wrapped in evocative, poetic metaphors, are perceived as threats to oppressive governments. One of Mercedes’ favorite songs, which in many ways becomes equivalent to her own struggle and resilience, is “Como la Cigarra” (Like the Cicada), by the Argentine poet and children’s book writer María Elena Walsh.

      Mercedes Sosa and Oscar Matus are the key figures of the New Song Movement in Argentina. With a desire to exchange ideas with artists and movements throughout Latin America, they meet with eleven other artists and poets in Mendoza on February 11, 1963, to sign the New Song Movement (Manifiesto Fundacional de Nueva Canciónero). The movement emphasizes the continent’s indigenous history and native cultural roots, making use of folk instruments like the Andean flute, the quena, pan pipes, and the ten-stringed charango.⁹

      In Argentina, Mercedes and Oscar work closely with Armando Tejada Gómez, an Argentine poet living in Mendoza. Gomez writes the songs, Matus composes the music, and Mercedes Sosa provides the voice connecting the two. Mercedes never writes her own songs—her strength lies in interpreting the songs of others and making them her own. “I fall in love with a song like one falls in love with a man. I love what I sing,”³ she says.She gets many of her songs from Víctor Jara and Violeta Parra of Chile. “Gracias a la vida” (Thanks to Life), by the latter of the two becomes one of the movement’s best-known songs worldwide, thanks to Mercedes’ interpretation, which is remarkably persuasive and personal, so much so that the song becomes her trademark for good. In the Unites States it is sung by Joan Baez, who also uses her popularity as a vehicle for social protest, expressing anti-imperialist views resulting from the Vietnam War.

       OSCAR MATUS is a fervent communist and supports militant methods. Mercedes joins him in the party, but she can’t accept its militant approach so she resigns shortly after. Despite the brevity of her membership in the Communist Party, she is pigeonholed the rest of her life as one of its members, stigmatized by right-wing politicians as communist and a threat. Meanwhile, the communists take advantage of her name appearing in their member lists, at the same time blaming her for not being a “real” communist because she doesn’t break with the Catholic Church. However, Mercedes doesn’t allow anyone to place her in a box. She is what she sings of in the song “Como un pájaro libre” (Like a Free Bird), a free bird who follows her heart and her conviction in everything she does.

      Her involvement in the New Song Movement is an ideal platform where she can combine her art and her concern about human issues. She is a woman with a leftist ideology, but she doesn’t see herself as a political leader and doesn’t like being labelled as a protester either.¹⁰ “Were they protesting songs? I've never liked that label. They were honest songs about the way things really are. I am a woman who sings, who tries to sing as well as possible with the best songs available. I was bestowed this role as a big protester, but it is not like that at all. I am just a thinking artist. Politics has always been an idealistic thing for me. I am a woman of the left, though I belong to no party and think artists should remain independent of all political parties. I believe in human rights. Injustice pains me, and I want to see real peace,”¹¹ she says.

      By insisting on being an artist, she gets some enemies on the left, while her leftist ideology makes her an enemy of the right. It is a dilemma, but it doesn’t stop her from taking a stand in her music. “Sometimes a song needs to have a social content. But the primordial issue is one of honesty. In Latin America, the mere act of an artist being honest is itself political,”¹² she says, and advocates that artists have the same rights to have an ideology as everybody else.

       IT IS not only political dilemmas Mercedes has to overcome. She is also facing a moral dilemma; she has become pregnant for the second time. Mercedes loves children and wants more but feels it is irresponsible of her.⁸ Her career is consuming almost all of her time and energy, and she is living a turbulent, often changing life that lacks the safe environment necessary to raise a child. She is already struggling to be the mother she wants to be to Fabián, and it is a huge challenge for her to reconcile her high expectations of herself as a mother with her ambitions as an artist. She is overwhelmed by the СКАЧАТЬ