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Lucinda and I received very unexpected and very sad news last night that the singer Lhasa De Sela passed away on New Years Day at the age of 41. She was an incredible artist with an amazing voice like no other. I wanted to post this here as Lhasa (she usually just used her first name) was one of Lucinda’s favorite artists and Lucinda has played her records constantly since we’ve known each other, in factshe was the first artist that Lucinda turned me on to when we met. She rarely toured in this decade -in fact her illness forced her to cancel her first large tour in the US in 2009 and she only made three records in twelve years:
La Llorona -1997
The Living Road – 2003
Lhasa -2009
I am posting this here because although they never met and we never got a chance to see her play live, her incredible music really meant a lot to Lucinda and myself. I thought that it was a fitting way to pay tribute to a very special artist that few knew about, but many were about to. I can recommend all of the records but The Living Road was basically the soundtrack to our lives when Lucinda and I were off the road. For a better part of two years Lucinda loaded up the cd changer in the house and did her mixes, as she put it, and the Living Road never came out of the mix and every time one of it’s songs came on it just stood out among everything else and stopped me in my tracks. And every time I heard her voice it revealed something new-the way the best music does. It is the music of a unique and special spirit-as Lhasa was.How sad. Such a talent and taken away from us at the age of 37 after a twenty-one month long struggle with breast cancer. There was undoubtedly so much more music in her heart & soul that the world will now not get to enjoy…
Tom
For those interested in more details about Ms. de Sela and her artistry, her is a link to a NYTimes article about her passing.
In the article, I was struck by a definite parallel between Lu’s music & Ms. de Sela’s. The author says that Ms. de Sela’s music was “difficult to pigeonhole” – something I say all the time about Lu when describing her to friends & family.
And, there was another great quote from another artist I like a good deal – Feist:
Her melodies are hypnotic,” the Canadian singer-songwriter Feist told The New York Times in 2005. “There’s something about her voice: you can tell her feet are planted on the ground, and she’s not even moving — maybe she’s just holding her arm out in front of her — and she’s just singing from the marrow of her bones.
Tom
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