On Mercedes Sosa

by David Contreras-Araya

Adense voice emerges from the faint strumming of a guitar. Reuniting with the Bombo, almost in solidarity, is the lyricism of pastoral nostalgia and later—a proud rendering of Argentine nationality. As Mercedes Sosa promises in the opening piece for her sophomore album: “When I have the land / those who fight will have it / the teachers, the woodcutters, the workers.”

Mercedes Sosa was, if anything, an effective icon of a pan-Latin American indigeneity. Yet her music betrays a modernist synthesis of formal constructions in Eurocentric music. As historian Matthew B. Karush observes in his critical analysis of Argentine music, her frequent collaborators and final compositions did embrace the indigenous zamba rhythms—but nonetheless made eager use of alternative jazz guitar chords, among other cosmopolitan airs, which had permeated tango in the 60s. This is notable in Allá Lejos Y Hace Tiempo, in which two distinctly jazz hands, one on contrabass and another on classical guitar, accompany Sosa’s lonely voice as it reverberates within your conscience. Yet other cases are more musically subtle, given the somewhat minimal arpeggiation and galloping strumming that mask its Euro- centric cosmopolitanism, seeking to elevate the Bombo, which alongside the Quena and Charango comprise Sosa’s exploits into Andean instrumentation. In occasional leaps, as in "Terceto Autóctono," Sosa’s opus flirts with dazzling interpolations that pin a Quena against an ensemble of orchestral strings.

Similarly, her lyricism maintains a similar theme despite its profound yearning for social decency and ethno-racial unity. In line with later musical and literary figures of popular Argentine music, namely Luis Alberto Spinetta, Sosa regarded herself, in practice, as an aesthete. Nostalgia, fervor, melancholia, and passion were the central figures of Sosa’s music, rather than the tormented native, common laborer, or figures of legendary epic poems. This served two reasons.

First, as Karush emphasizes, Sosa sought to mobilize folklore in the hopes of establishing a vast and respectable “panLatinist” sensibility. Instead of reinforcing the canonized homogenization of mestizos, Sosa maintained herself within an “essentialist” form of indigeneity that demanded Argentina’s existence to be of indigenous essence. Throughout the seventies, as an extension of the New Songbook’s manifesto,

Sosa later collaborated with and curated musical traditions from other nations. Most notably was the adoption of Violeta Parra’s foundational Chilean-centric work, and so was her frequent live appearances with the intrepid Milton Nascimento. This was an emphatic shift from the substance of her lyricism and music to the performers. Sosa’s long black hair, the trademark poncho, and stoicism were sensationalized and lauded by European and Argentine audiences alike. Despite Sosa’s palatable entrance into European sensibilities, her exoticized appearances inevitably bolstered her allure to the mainstream with an assurance that her performed indigeneity assured authenticity.

Secondly—and more practically—Sosa was the ambivalent subject of disjointed political regimes across the 20th century. Her lyrics were thereby reluctant to engage with audiences in explicitly political terms. As a member of the Communist Party, around the early 60s Sosa’s intellectual and artistic circles were frequent targets of harassment under Arturo Frondizi’s presidency. Admittedly, Sosa was also somewhat of a snob, but is easily forgiven in contradistinction with the unapologetically Westernized pop music of the burgeoning Nueva Ola movement (see Sandro, Cecilia).

The point was, therefore, to mobilize a vaguely “indigenista” persona to carve out a unique identity, which refused to be subsumed within Western colonization.

As listeners sift through Mercedes Sosa’s oeuvre, in her dedicated birthday broadcast, I encourage everyone to maintain a keen ear to the distinct dialogue that she maintains with our culture. Rather than a mere import, Sosa’s work serves as interlocution in mediating historically hostile identities into a harmonious synthesis of indigenous and European roots. As alluded to in this essay, there is much to misunderstand from the singular Mercedes Sosa—but there is also much to interrogate and contend with, and especially engage with in reflexive contemplation.