Indiana Nomma brings a glowing tribute show to Mercedes Sosa

Indiana Nomma brings a glowing tribute show to Mercedes Sosa


For the first time in São Paulo, the singer performs at the Blue Note concert in honor of one of the greatest voices in Latin America

If the voice truly carries all that a singer lives, indian name would have what? 120 years? His real age: 46. His geographical origin: Honduras up to 10 months, with residences in this sequence: Mexico (two years), Portugal (two years), Nicaragua (four years), then East Germany (four years ) and finally , 11 years and forever, Brazil. Daughter of a Bahian father and mother from Rio Grande do Sul, Indy lives in Brasilia after a few years in Rio and, after having sung in eight countries and just being recognized by the singer’s heirs Mercedes Sosa as the official interpreter of the Argentine singer in the world – something like having an Argentine singer as the official interpreter of Elis Regina🇧🇷 authorized by her children -, plays her first show in São Paulo.

His most recent album, recorded with guitarist André Pinto Siqueira, will be released on December 8, at the Blue Note headquarters, at the Conjunto Nacional (tickets are already on sale on the company’s website). Mercedes Sosa – A Voz dos Sem Voz is a masterpiece. Engaging and luminous, it is the most carefully crafted tribute ever made by a Brazilian artist to the greatest singer in Latin American musical history. Indiana’s voice doesn’t try to replicate Mercedes’, but he meets her, as does her story. She listens to songs like Mi Unicórnio Azul; Alfonsina and El Mar; Volver a los 17 or, however it is sung, Gracias a la Vida is to relive or discover beauties.

Mercedes, who died in 2009 after leaving a legacy of freedom and struggles against the oppression of women and people victims of totalitarian governments – a courage that cost her episodes of persecution by the Argentine dictatorship and a painful exile in Europe -, had close relationships with Brazilian artists such as Milton Nascimento, Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso and Gal Costa. La Negra, as she is still called in other Latin American countries, became, while still alive, a hope, as well as the artist who lived before her peers.

Indiana Nomma was 3 years old when, in 1980, she was placed on the shoulders of her father, the sociologist and journalist Clodomir Santos de Morais, to see Mercedes sing in the Plaza de la Revolución Sandinista, in Managua, Nicaragua. Persecuted by the military government for developing a social education program for communities in the interior of Honduras, they had to leave the country. Her work would lead to the creation of Hondupalma, the largest biodiesel company in the region, which earned Clodomir years later the honors of head of state by the new Honduran government. Also in those years, the ideological tensions in Brazil, which ended up imprisoning Clodomir as a political prisoner in the same cell as the educator Paulo Freire, led his mother, Eva Martins, or Célia Lima, her nom de guerre, to prepare her daughter: “If I ask you to run, you run, even if I’m not running after you. And don’t look back.”

Singing Mercedes is something Indiana has been doing since she was 8 years old, and although she just recorded an album with this repertoire, she started touring with the show in 2000. “My first contact with Latin American music was with my mother. So, my three main pillars have become Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés and Mercedes Sosa,” he says. Besides admiring the artist, she also talks about some of her postures. “Two days before her death, Mercedes was still taking singing lessons. And she liked being connected to new artists, because she knew she would leave a legacy. It is a pity that the Brazilian Olympus, with few exceptions, does not do the same .”

MEDIATION. There is greater importance when paying tribute with history and empathy between the parties. More than honoring an already established artist, the update of Años, Si Se Calla El Cantor, La Maza, Como La Cigarra and Canción con Todos becomes a second gateway to the worlds of Mercedes and Indiana. “I had resistance, yes, I didn’t imagine how my work would be perceived, especially in Argentina. But some important returns started, like (singer) Fabiana Cozza who sent a message saying she was crying with the album, or people who said that until then they did not know Mercedes Sosa”.

The Argentine Agustín Matus, 36-year-old producer, nephew of Mercedes and musician Oscar Matus, explains, from Buenos Aires, what made him, together with his sister Araceli Matus, Indiana, recognize him as the official interpreter of their grandmother. “A set of things. She’s a Brazilian living in Honduras, that’s already something special. But of course, the interpretation, the hand gestures, the costumes, the wide vocal range, the repertoire – what I call the manifesto — and his care about talking to family. A lot of artists don’t do that.” Her line might sound like an Indiana cover, but, he says, it’s the complete opposite. “She doesn’t try to imitate my grandmother, like many singers do here in Argentina, wearing a poncho and smoothing her hair. She always looks ridiculous.”

Another important point is, according to Agustín, the courage and dedication of the Brazilian singer in singing something that not even the new generations of Argentines have accepted: Alfonsina y El Mar. “Songs like this will eventually disappear if female singers don’t believe they can do. And I don’t know anyone who does it better than Indiana.”

SERVICE: Mercedes Sosa – The voice of the voiceless. Note Blu: Av. Paolista 2073. 5 (12/8), 10.30 pm. Indiana Nomma and Andre Pinto. BRL 45/BRL 90. bluenotesp.com

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Source: Terra

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