POP MUSIC REVIEWS : SOSA OFFERS URGENCY, ARTISTRY

Latin America is a prolific producer of exiles, ruthless dictators and fratricidal insurrections. It also creates great poets and songwriters.

An inspired singing performance by Argentina’s Mercedes Sosa was a pleasing reminder of this fact Wednesday at Wadsworth Theatre. Sosa’s return to Los Angeles after a two-year absence also highlighted a year that has seen a renewed surge in quality Latino music.

In contrast with lesser practitioners of Nueva Cancion (New Song) who have reduced the socially critical, folk-inspired style to a handful of instrumental and polemical cliches, Sosa imbued the music with an urgent sense of artistic indispensability.

The 52-year-old singer’s renditions of “Gracias a la Vida,” a passionate anthem to life by the late Violeta Parra of Chile, and “Galopa Murieta,” a portrait of brooding vengeance from Pablo Neruda’s cantata to California rebel Joaquin Murieta, illustrated the Spanish-speaking hemisphere’s poetic and songwriting richness.

But it appeared that three years of political exile during Argentina’s “dirty war” have exacted an emotional toll on Sosa, one of Nueva Cancion’s founders. Nearly absent from her lush contralto was the joyful optimism of more than an decade ago. In its place was a painful melancholy and stubborn political defiance of her return to Argentina conveyed in love songs such as “Todo Cambia” (“everything changes”).

Peteco Carabajal’s “Como Pajaros en el Aire,” about a child’s discovery of wonder through a mother’s morning chores, was especially effective when sung by Sosa, a voluminous, motherly figure with striking Indian features. Her voice, which can descend or rise with dramatic effect, was elegantly highlighted with bursts of rock, samba and jazz colorings from her four accompanists on guitar, electric piano, bass and percussion.

But if the 52-year-old Sosa faltered, it was during the concert’s final moments when she seemed to tire and suffer momentary lapses of intonation and intensity. Seconds later, however, she returned to the stage entirely refreshed for a rousing encore. She was scheduled to return to the Wadsworth on Thursday.