Mercedes Sosa: 1935-2009

Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa, who fought South America's dictators with her voice and became a giant of contemporary Latin American music, has died aged 74, her family said in a statement.

One of the best known names in Latin American music, she had been in intensive care in a hospital for days with kidney problems.

Her body was taken to the Congress building in Buenos Aires for public visitation Sunday afternoon (local time) and her remains are to be cremated today, local media reported.

Known affectionately as La Negra - 'the Black One' due to her dark hair and skin - Sosa was dubbed "the voice of the silent majority" for championing the poor and fighting for political freedom.

Her version of Violeta Parra's Gracias a la Vida (Thanks to Life) became an anthem for leftists around the world in the 1970s and 1980s when she was forced into exile and her recordings were banned.

"Her undisputed talent, her honesty and her profound convictions leave a great legacy to future generations," her family said in the statement posted on her website.

The breadth of her powerful voice earned her plaudits abroad and popularity at home and she cut a striking figure with her long hair and trademark ponchos at live shows into her 70s.

In the turbulent 1960s and 1970s Sosa was a key exponent of the highly politicised Nuevo Cancionero (New Song) movement, which sought to take folk music back to its roots.

She also was a member of the Communist Party and her political sympathies attracted attention from the authorities during Argentina's bloody 1976-83 dictatorship, when up to 30,000 people were killed in a crackdown on leftist dissent.

State censors banned her songs and she fled to Europe in 1979 after being arrested in the middle of a concert along with the entire audience in the university city of La Plata.

She frequently asserted herself as a woman of the left but maintained that her only true vocation was singing.

"Really, I was born to sing," she said in a magazine interview in 2005.

"My life is dedicated to singing, finding songs and singing them.

"If I get myself involved in politics, I'd have to neglect what's most important to me, the folk song."

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes_Sosa