Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Lhasa de Sela: 1972-2010

Obviously out of the cultural loop, I became aware of Lhasa and her songs only upon the occasion of her death, after a long struggle with breast cancer, at the age of 37. And so life and death intertwine, making, in some ways at least, the distinction meaningless.

This haunting video, a dream echo, tells us something of what she was. I had no idea what I had been missing, but I
know that I miss her now.



UPDATE: (January 6) Blogger brebis noir republishes an article based upon an interview with Lhasa that she did in 2004--well worth reading. And reader Blues Clair offers some new Lhasa tracks--have a listen.

2 comments:

bob dawson (bob&ul said...

Get her first CD too. Stunning. She played a lot of clubs in Montreal before recording anything; those live shows made her well-known in Montreal night life. The cultural wall between French and English Canada is very strange.
Sometimes it takes someone singinig in Spanish to remind us how small our French -vs- English disputes are on the world stage.
Among Quebecois artists, she was embraced. Guitarists, for example, were lined up to get on stage with her.
She was from a circus family, basically, and music was just one of the forms of art that she excelled in.
A true pity that, living in Canada, she was better known in Mexico and Spain.

joyfulkira said...

Sad. I just discovered her on my facebook page yesterday and I too miss her already. A cousin of mine lives in Toronto and shared her story and 2 videos of her songs. Haunting and moving. So sad. My condolences to her family.

So much in this life we don't even know we have missed.