Como la Cigarra / Like the Cicada

And the Negra went away to keep on singing chacareras in heaven, and delighting the angels with her matchless voice.
Mercedes Sosa was unique - although now is going to happen like always when a popular artist dies that all hang on from the boobs (as Moria would say) and tell that she was the best that won't be anyone like her and those things - I reach the conclusion that she was unique only 3 years ago when I could see her live at the Rose Garden in Palermo. I felt goosebumps in my skin from the moment she started to sing and I remember that I was all night like floating with emotion skin-deep, and I even cried moved without knowing very well why her voice caused that effect/affect so special.
Of all the songs I have heard coming out of her exceptional throat, my favorite has always been "Like the Cicada". Wrote by a truly great like Maria Elena Walsh (A LADY WRITER, yes, like this in capital letters) in 1972, talks about resistance and fight with a metaphor such natural and tender that everybody can understand.
Mercedes included it for the first time in the album "Mercedes Sosa at Argentina" that recorded live in her return to the country, and that strangely never recorded in a studio version.
From here you can find several options to download this album complete.


Several times they killed me
Several times I died
However, I'm here
Resurrecting.
I thank the misfortune
And the hand with a dagger
Because it killed me so bad
And I kept singing.

Singing to the sun like the cicada
After a year under the ground
Just like a survivor
That comes back from war.

Several times they erased me
Several I disappeared
To my own funeral I went
Alone and crying.
I made a knot in the handkerchief
But I forgot later
That it wasn't the only time
And I kept singing.

Singing to the sun like the cicada
After a year under the ground
Just like a survivor
That comes back from war.

Several times they killed me
Several you'll resurrect
How many nights you'll spend
Desperated.
At the time of the failure
And the darkness
Someone will rescue
To go singing.

Singing to the sun like the cicada
After a year under the ground
Just like a survivor
That comes back from war.