Corazón Americano

Lore & Background

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' is a common nickname in Argentina for people with darker complexion, 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 1962. A performance at the 1965 Cosquín National Folklore Festival 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 (called nuevo cancionero in Argentina). Her second record was Canciones con Fundamento, a collection of Argentine folk songs. Sosa spent the late 1960s building her audience in Europe and among the cosmopolitan middle class in Buenos Aires. In 1967, she toured the United States and Europe with great success. In the early 1970s, she released two concept albums with composer Ariel Ramírez and lyricist Félix Luna: Cantata Sudamericana and Mujeres argentinas. She also recorded a tribute to Chilean musician Violeta Parra in 1971, including 'Gracias a la vida'. She popularized songs by Milton Nascimento, Pablo Milanés, and Silvio Rodríguez. Throughout the 1970s she was part of two films by Leopoldo Torre Nilsson: El Santo de la Espada in 1970 and Güemes, la tierra en armas in 1971, in which she portrayed Juana Azurduy de Padilla. After the military junta of Jorge Videla came to power in 1976, Sosa faced death threats. At a concert in La Plata in 1979, she was searched and arrested on stage, along with all those attending. Their release came through international intervention. She was officially barred from performing by the military regime. Banned in her own country, she moved to Paris and then to Madrid. While in exile, she released the album A quien doy in 1981. She returned to Argentina in February 1982, several months before the military regime collapsed due to the Falklands War, and gave a series of concerts at

In Their Own Story

It is a Saturday in November, and the rain has just stopped over the Valle de México. The sky is that particular grey-gold that only appears in the Valley after a downpour, and the grass at the Azteca glistens like a dark mirror. You push through the turnstiles with the crowd, the air already thick with the smell of roasted corn and the sharp tang of the wet pitch. Somewhere in the east stand, a drum line begins a slow, rolling beat—two, four, two, four—and a hundred voices catch it, add the 'olá,' and the sound builds until the concrete itself seems to vibrate. A child on her father's shoulders points at the tunnel. The players emerge in blue and white, and the roar that hits you is not loud so much as total, a single organism breathing. You are not watching a match. You are inside the heart.

Reader's Guide

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 1995, Konex Foundation from Argentina granted her the Diamond Konex Award as the most important personality in the popular music of her country in the last decade.

Did You Know?

• Sosa's nickname 'la Negra' refers to her indigenous heritage.
• She was arrested on stage during a concert in La Plata in 1979.
• Her song 'Balderrama' is featured in the 2008 movie Che.
• She was a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Latin America and the Caribbean.