By Elio Leturia –

The song “Volver a los 17” (To be 17 Again) by Mercedes Sosa came into my life just when I turned that age.

I found myself at the university making use of my rebellious and questioning spirit. I remember the impact this song had on my adolescence, not only for the force of the poetic words but for the profound voice of the Argentine singer Sosa, who for me became the epitome melancholy spirit and infinite hope.

Sosa became a symbol of struggle and delight for the simple things in life, and later of celebration.

My passion for her music made me search for it everywhere — pirated cassettes in Kennedy Park in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima, borrowed vinyl records.

“I only ask God that war doesn’t make me indifferent,” her lyrics rang through my bones.

Looking around at an unjust and unequal society in terms of distribution of wealth made me identify even more with what Sosa expressed in her music. But her voice, deep and resonant, strong and powerful, transported me to wide corners, lonely and infinite.

Maybe the song that best showed me the fullness of her ample repertory was “Alfonsina and the Sea.” What a beautiful song. I would lock myself up in my room and listen to it for hours. This production of Ariel Ramírez and Félix Luna was exquisite because it allowed Sosa’s voice to shine fully. Her voice is the principal instrument of that song.

This interpretation forms part of “Argentine Women” in which Sosa sings and homage to important women in Latin American history like Alfonsina Storni, Juana Azurduy, Rosario Vera, Manuela Pedraza, among others.

At that time Sosa only rang out of the speakers of my small stereo with a double cassette player and radio. I finally attended a Sosa concert at the end of the 1980s. It was an outdoor concert at night.

Sosa appeared to be bathed in blue lights, with her Botero-like presence, wearing a dress as wide as a house. Her presence filled the stage. Her voice was a strong as was her body. The clarity of her enunciation and the reverberation of her sounds captured the audience into silence. It was simply hypnotizing. The culminating moment came when she sang “Sina,” a song by the Brazilian artist Djavan.

Sosa didn’t have it easy. She had to flee her native Argentina and seek exile in Europe so she could continue her work. She was terrorized by a right-wing death squad during the 1976-83 military junta.

To live in a society where intolerance and abuse are part of daily life doesn’t allow one to say what you think or feel. But to leave one’s homeland is no easy thing.

She told The New York Times, “When you are in exile, you take your suitcase, but there are things that don’t fit. There are things in your mind, like colors and smells and childhood attitudes, and there is also the pain and the death you saw. You shouldn’t deny those things, because to do so can make you ill.”

She said something similar in a recent interview on Argentine television: “I didn’t choose to sing for the people…life chose me to sing.”

It was us — her fans — that chose her to sing for us, to wake us up from our daily routine and put us face to face with our own reality.

More than 30 years later, I still listen to Sosa, the most important singer that Latin America has ever produced. Alive or dead, her voice is permanently sealed in my mind.

Elio Leturia, born in Peru, is an assistant journalism professor at Columbia College Chicago.