Mercedes Sosa 🎼 Gracias a la Vida 🇦🇷

Gracias a la Vida  🙏 Thanks to Life

9 July 1935  🇦🇷  4 October 2009

Born on July 9, 1935 in the northern Argentine province of Tucumán,  Mercedes Sosa’s family lineage came from the indigenous Aymara people.  Her heritage deeply influenced her stylistically and by 15, she won a  radio talent contest for her traditional folk music. A dramatic tipping  point of her career happened on this day in 1965, when singer Jorge  Cafrune invited Sosa on stage during his set at Argentina’s renowned  Cosquín Folk Festival. Her performance received a massive ovation and by  the following year, she had signed a recording contract.
Many of Sosa's best-known songs were written by others, but her  performances of songs like Violeta Parra’s "Gracias a la Vida" (Thanks  to Life) and Horacio Guarany’s “Si Se Calla El Cantor” (If the Singer is  Silenced) helped catapult her into fame. She released some 70 albums  over the course of nearly a six-decade career, exploring diverse genres  such as Argentinian tango, Cuban nueva trova, Brazilian bossa nova,  rock, and sacred music. In later years, she collaborated with artists  such as Luciano Pavarotti, Sting, Joan Baez, and even Shakira.
Fearlessly singing truth to power, she went into exile from her  homeland for several years and was finally able to return home in 1982.  She continued to perform around the world and later became a UNESCO  goodwill ambassador.
Here’s to La Negra!

"Gracias A La Vida"

Thank you to life
Mercedes Sosa 

👇 🎼 👇
https://youtu.be/jAlKfFLFnRI?si=VF53nlCrt3geIMnX

Today’s Doodle was created by guest artist Shanti Rittgers. Below, she shares some thoughts on Sosa and the Doodle:

Q: Do you have a favorite Mercedes Sosa song?

A: Everything she sings sounds so good, it’s hard to choose… So far, I keep going back to “Luna Tucumana.” It’s a beautiful song, one that makes me think of melancholic tangos, fleeting feelings of intimacy and grappling with inner troubles. English lyric translations further helped me understand the context, and built a romantic vision of Mercedes singing to the moon, wistful and alone on a winding midnight path. 

Q: What quality in her music did you seek to express in the Doodle?
A: Her resonance. She can sing the deepest, saddest song or the brightest tune, and regardless her voice hits you like a river of wind and carries you away.

Q: What inspired your selection of a brown, black, and red palette?
A: In this case, reds and browns help create an earthy final color palette. In photos, she’s often wearing red and black patterned ponchos of Native cultural descent, and black is relative to one of her nicknames, “La Negra.”

Q: What can you tell us about the percussion instrument Mercedes is playing in one of your initial sketches?
A: The Bombo is a drum of Argentinean origin, and though it is large the sound produced from it can be considerably soft. I included it in the final after hearing and seeing Mercedes Sosa play it in many songs. I believe it was a symbolic and favorite instrument of hers throughout her career.

Mercedes Sosa 🙏 Gracias a la Vida
[Letra - Lyrics]
👇 🎼 👇

https://youtu.be/ZAePzqgaKMg?si=wWJWnSDdTHE7k8do

Haydée Mercedes "La Negra" Sosa  was an Argentine singer who was popular throughout Latin America and many countries outside the region. With her roots in Argentine folk music, Sosa became one of the preeminent exponents of El nuevo cancionero. She gave voice to songs written by many Latin American songwriters. Her music made people hail her as the "voice of the voiceless ones". She was often called "the conscience of Latin America".

Sosa performed in venues such as the Lincoln Center in New York City, the Théâtre Mogador in Paris, the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, as well as sold-out shows in New York's Carnegie Hall and the Roman Colosseum during her final decade of life. Her career spanned four decades and she was the recipient of six Latin Grammy awards (2000, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2011), including a Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004 and two posthumous Latin Grammy Award for Best Folk Album in 2009 and 2011. She won the Premio Gardel in 2000, the main musical award in Argentina. She served as an ambassador for UNICEF. 

In a career spanning four decades, she worked with performers across several genres and generations, folk, opera, pop, rock, including Martha Argerich, Andrea Bocelli,  Joan Baez, Francis Cabrel,  Luz Casal,  Lucio Dalla,  Nana Mouskouri,  Luciano Pavarotti,  Shakira, Sting, Caetano Veloso, Julieta Venegas, Gustavo Cerati, Konstantin Wecker, Maria Farantouri, Lucecita Benitez, Nilda Fernández, Charly Garcia, León Gieco, Gian Marco,Pablo Milanés, Holly Near, Milton Nascimento, Pata Negra, Fito Páez, Franco De Vita,  Lourdes Pérez, Silvio Rodríguez, Ismael Serrano 

Mercedes Sosa, Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Milton Nascimento e Gal Costa
 Volver a los 17
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Sosa was born on 9 July 1935, in San Miguel de Tucumán, in the northwestern Argentine province of Tucumán, of mestizo ancestry. 

She was of French, Spanish and Diaguita descent  Her nickname "la negra", which is a common nickname in Argentina for people with darker complexion, is a reference to her indigenous heritage. 

Her parents, a day laborer and a washerwoman, were Peronists, although they never registered in the party, and she started her career as a singer for the Peronist Party in Tucuman under the name Gladys Osorio. In 1950, at age fifteen, she won a singing competition organized by a local radio station and was given a contract to perform for two months. She recorded her first album, La Voz de la Zafra, in 1959. A performance at the 1965 Cosquín National Folklore Festival—where she was introduced and brought to the stage while sitting in the audience by fellow folk singer Jorge Cafrune— brought her to the attention of the Argentine public. Sosa and her first husband, Manuel Oscar Matus, with whom she had one son, were key players in the mid-60s nueva canción movement (which was called nuevo cancionero in Argentina). Her second record was Canciones con Fundamento, a collection of Argentine folk songs. 

After the military junta of Jorge Videla came to power in 1976, the atmosphere in Argentina grew increasingly oppressive. Sosa faced death threats against both her and her family, but refused for many years to leave the country. At a concert in La Plata in 1979, Sosa was searched and arrested on stage, along with all those attending the concert. Their release came about through international intervention. Despite attempts to hold more concerts, she was officially barred from performing by the military regime. Banned in her own country, she moved to Paris and then to Madrid. She has spoken publicly about her artistic and emotional struggles during this period of her life. While in exile, she released the album A Quien Doy in 1981. The album included a recording of the song "Cuando Me Acuerdo de Mi Pais" which was originally written by the prolific Chilean singer/songwriter, Patricio Manns. The song, which he wrote while also in political exile, expresses the sorrow he felt from being separated from his homeland.  She related to this feeling and struggled to continue recording and performing. In an interview with the New York Times, she said, “It was a mental problem, a problem of morale...It wasn’t my throat, or anything physical".

Sosa returned to Argentina from her exile in Europe in February 1982, several months before the military regime collapsed as a result of the Falklands War, and gave a series of concerts at the Teatro Ópera in Buenos Aires, where she invited many of her younger colleagues to share the stage. A double album of recordings, Mercedes Sosa en Argentina, from these performances became an instant best seller. She then traveled to perform in her home province of Tucuman. However, these performances were largely ignored by mainstream media in the country. In subsequent years, Sosa continued to tour both in Argentina and abroad, performing in such venues as the Lincoln Center in New York City and the Théâtre Mogador in Paris. In poor health for much of the 1990s, she performed a comeback show in Argentina in 1998. In 1994, she played in the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. In 2002, she sold out both Carnegie Hall in New York and the Colosseum in Rome in the same year

A supporter of Perón, she favored leftist causes throughout her life. She supported President Raul Alfonsin in the election of 1983 which marked the return of democracy in Argentina following the dictatorship. She referred to this election as "Argentina's Spring" She opposed President Carlos Menem, who was in office from 1989 to 1999, and supported the election of Néstor Kirchner, who became president in 2003.

Gracias a la Vida  🙏 Thanks to Life
Mercedes Sosa

Lyric Video in English
👇 🎼 👇

https://youtu.be/jAlKfFLFnRI?si=I6x9Vkg_3ZN7yaS4

 

 Suffering from recurrent endocrine and respiratory problems in later years, the 74-year-old Sosa was hospitalized in Buenos Aires on 18 September 2009. She died from multiple organ failure on 4 October 2009, at 5:15 am. 

Her body was placed on display at the National Congress building in Buenos Aires for the public to pay their respects, and President Fernández de Kirchner ordered three days of national mourning. Thousands had queued by the end of the day.

Sosa's obituary in The Daily Telegraph said she was "an unrivalled interpreter of works by her compatriot, the Argentine Atahualpa Yupanqui, and Chile's Violeta Parra". Helen Popper of Reuters reported her death by saying she "fought South America's dictators with her voice and became a giant of contemporary Latin American music". Sosa received three Latin Grammy nominations for her album, in 2009 . She went on to win Best Folk Album about a month after her death.

Mercedes Sosa lying in repose, with her family and President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner viewing...