My favourite singer, the Argentinian Mercedes Sosa, has recently announced a tour of the U.S.A in April, and that she will soon "be coming over to Europe, where they have been waiting for me for a while now".
Mercedes Sosa is 71 (she was born in 1935) and was in poor health for a while, but, after losing weight, her health and her voice are back! On the 28th, she will be performing in Cosquin, Argentina, at the National Festival of Folklore, with Leon Gieco and Victor Heredia, two singer-songwriters who wrote tunes for her.
Sosa sings some traditional songs but also became famous for her involvement with the nueva cancion movement of the 60s, which combined "traditional Latin American folk music idioms with progressive and often politicised lyrics" (I am quoting Wikipedia here)
My favourite CD of hers is Mercedes Sosa en Argentina, a recording of concerts she did in Buenos Aires in 1982, when she returned from her 3 year exile (At a concert in La Plata in 1979, Sosa was searched and arrested on stage, and the attending crowd was arrested) This CD includes some pure classics of the Latin American repertoire, written by the greatest: Silvio Rodriguez, Bola de Nieve, Antonio Tarrago Ros, Atahualpa Yupanqui, Leon Gieco and more... Her voice is at her best, and the reaction of the crowd is wild. I get really moved everytime I listen to it!
I cannot wait for her to come to Europe.
I may have posted this already, but here is a video of her singing Violeta Parra's beautiful "Gracias a la vida"
