LHASA DE SELA

The singer Lhasa de Sela passed away in her Montreal home on the night of January 1st 2010, just before midnight.

Lhasa de Sela was born in 1972 in the small village of Big Indien in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York (USA). Her father, Alejandro de Sela ethnic Mexicans, a teacher of Spanish and Mexican literature era onkisty and writer who has lived half his life in general. Mother Alexandra Karam merikanka Lebanese descent, a former actress and current fotografinya contrast, half of his life spent in Mexico. (History does not, how can they still managed to meet. Perhaps, on the border between the two countries, when they both decided that half of life has passed, and it's time to return ...).
In addition to the three stepsisters and three half-brothers from the singer has three sisters (Skye, Aiying and Miriem), which act in European circuses as a gymnast on a trapeze acrobat and kanatohodki. For seven years, numerous family of the future singer lived in a converted school bus, shuttling between the U.S. and Mexico. The bus was not the TV, one of the most important tool in creating an American identity, and Lhasa devoted all his spare time reading. In addition, she listened to their favorite music of his parents: his father - a fan of American and Mexican "oldiz" 1940 - 1950-ies (by the way, he co-authored lyrics Floricanto), and his mother - an ethnic (Arab, Latin, gypsy, Japanese and so on etc.) music. Among his teachers Lhasa calls Billie Holliday, Chavela Vargas, Tom Waits, Cuco Sanchez, Maria Callas, Victor Haru, Jacques Brel, and Bjork. Critics have compared her work with the songs Sesario Evora and even Vladimir Vysotsky (in the latter case, presumably, referring to the degree of energy impact on the listener, not the timbre of voice). At the age of thirteen years (her family was living in San Francisco) Lhasa began singing at a local Greek cafe. According to her, she performed unaccompanied, because she was not familiar musicians and just because I could not sing ... In 1991, when Lhasa was visiting his sisters, enrolled in one of the circus school in Montreal, she met jazz guitarist Yves Desrosiers. That's when they got the idea to write the disk, based on the material of Mexican folk songs, called "La Llorona" on behalf of one of the characters in the Aztec mythology. The material for this disc for a long time tested in Montreal clubs, and only the 1996 team, joined by bassist Mario Lehár, began to record. After the disk group Lhasa performed at many festivals, not only in Canada but also in Europe. Especially the warmth of her taken in France. A year after the release of "La Llorona" has sold 50 thousand copies, gaining thereby the honorary title of "golden disk". However, since about Lhasa is not known. Maybe she broke relations with Yves Desrosiers, a union with which it was not only creative, or completely switched to painting ... In any case, it was a long silence testifies to the sincerity of her album created in which it invested before the end of the whole experience to the experience, too intimate, to be operated continuously. This CD primarily affects the integrity sound. Enveloping sound that seems to not be created only a few who participated in the recording of instruments and voices, it merged some sources that can not be recorded even in the most advanced studio: slanting stream of light, projecting window on the stone floor, dust particles, silently floating in this light, half-closed eyes singing Lhasa ... An even greater delight is the fact that the songs were recorded in the home: the instruments - in the kitchen of a Montreal friend, and the vocals of Lhasa on her kitchen, which turned out to be an ideal for recording of her voice, acoustic features. It used several tools, personally constructed Yves Desrosiers, for example, melting, like a mirage in the Mexican desert, slide bass, lonely yearning at the end of the last track disc. And, of course, the very voice of Lhasa. Saturated loneliness, misunderstood and female helplessness. Each time, listening to the album, I think that I want to hide the owner of this deep voice, like a bird, between the warm hands and protect against this callous cruel world. Without such opportunity, I called that same friend. She did not understand anything and hung up. Perhaps it's for the better ...

PS. Article was written in 2000. Since then, as it turned out, Lhasa began to tour, mostly in Canada and France. In 2003, taking part in a tour of the circus big top, where the act of her sister, as a composer and performer of the accompanying music, she released a new album The Living Road. Around the same time her friend Yves Desrosiers recorded his interpretation of the songs of Vladimir Vysotsky. While I managed to hear only one track from the album of Lhasa, and he gives every reason to believe that the new album will be no worse and maybe better than "La Llorona"