Alwayswriteagain: Passing Strange!

Monday 27 February 2017

Passing Strange!

When the Argentinian singer Mercedes Sosa died in October 2009 she was widely mourned in Israel.

She had performed with artistes like David Broza; appeared at the tenth anniversary celebration of the Peres Centre for Peace and with her compatriot and fellow singer, Teresa Parodi planted a tree in the Mamoriah Forest near the Ben Shemen Moshav. So it’s no wonder that when Parodi re-visited Israel soon after Sosa’s death, she planted another tree in her friend’s memory. It was the closing of a circle, she said.

Also unsurprising, that with both a large Latino population, many of whose relatives were lost among ‘the disappeared’ of Argentina’s Dirty War and a tradition of social ideals, that Israelis adored Sosa as ‘the voice of the voiceless’ and a champion of the rights of the oppressed.

So while allowing that the public memory is short, I find it odd that I received no reaction when I mentioned Sosa to an online group of Jewish and Israeli Latinos while reading Anette Christensen’s book about her.**

Even more peculiar to me – a self-styled ‘cynic’s cynic’ - is Christensen’s insistence that the deceased singer’s magnetism was – is - great enough to help a total stranger like herself to self-heal from beyond the grave!

Christensen is Danish but she and her husband presently live in Turkey. She travelled widely after escaping a deeply troubled childhood home and her wide-ranging career veered from charity work to property sales and from running a travel agency to teaching. She now concentrates on ‘personal growth’ after her recovery from chronic fatigue syndrome with the help of techniques like ‘mindfulness’ and mind-body ‘dualism’.

Now Christensen, who too, has spent considerable time in Israel, has produced a suitably curious mixed bag of a book mingling the recent history of Latin American politics; a potted biography of Sosa written mostly in the present tense; a revealing personal memoir plus many photographs of the singer and her own simple pencil sketches.

Her book is of only passing interest to me because I previously knew nothing of Sosa. However, I guess it will appeal to all those, particularly in Israel and the United States, who are captivated by the sort of disciplines I cite above. If I scoff too harshly I’ll bring a ton of bricks tumbling about me. So this time, I’ll end here!