Suma Paz, an interview

Dear listeners of our podcast series „Music Masters Count“, very welcome! Today I present to you the poet, singer and guitarist Suma Paz!

It is the first edition of about 15 podcasts with interviews with the greatest of Argentine folklore such as Eduardo Falu, Domingo Cura, Leda Valladares, Gustavo “Cuchi” Leguizamon, Atahualpa Yupanqui and Mercedes Sosa.

.We started this series dedicated to folklore with the great lady of southern song: Suma Paz was born on April 5, 1938 in Santa Fe, but he grew up in the province of Buenos Aires. All vacations he spent with his grandmother in the countryside, in the humid Pampa, on the border between the provinces of Santa Fe and Buenos Aires

This landscape with its sky immense, its plains and its colors marked her throughout her life.

Suma Paz began playing the guitar at the age of 6. She later studied philosophy and letters at the Universidad Nacional del Litoral. After graduating, she appeared on various radio and television shows. She dedicated herself to the work of Atahualpa Yupanqui who she considered to be her teacher.

But she also wrote and sang her own songs. On her tours of Europe, Japan, and the United States, she made the Southern Song known throughout the world. She received numerous awards, including in 1995 as one of the five best folk singers of the decade.

What Suma Paz told me in her house in Morón in February 1993 was full of poetry and wisdom. She told me what fascinated her so much about the work of Atahualpa Yupanqui. The two were very close friends, and Yupanqui wrote to him over and over again from his exile in Paris, telling him not to stop fighting for the survival of the Southern Song.

Suma Paz she talked about why Argentines are so nostalgic. And why the landscape of the Pampa inspires its poets and singers to write contemplative songs full of philosophy, in which the cry has no place.

Listen for yourselves what this great poet and singer Suma Paz told me, who died in April 2009 at only 71 years of age.