In memory: Lhasa
The incandescent singer Lhasa died at her home in Montréal on January 1, 2010, at 37, after a nearly two year illness with breast cancer. We were introduced to her music in the mid '90s by a friend who was her manager then, and were enchanted by her power, humanity and beauty from the first performance.
She was a petite, intense, elegant, shy, mystical presence who completely inhabited her songs in French, Spanish or English.
Though especially treasured in her adopted home, Montréal, her far-flung performances intensified her gypsy aura; she was adored by many around the world. We will miss her, a gift to music and to life itself.
Lhasa, singing Pa'Llegar a tu Lado in Québec in 2005.
Comments
Lhasa was a second-generation hippie - her Mexican father and American mother travelled all around North America with the kids in an old school bus, home-schooled them. Her sisters preceded her up here as they were studying at a circus school (think it is related to Cirque du soleil - now there is a big circus and performing arts centre next to Cirque headquarters).
www.lhasadesela.com
You can find a number of her performances on You Tube, and if you buy or download her music, enter an enchanting and moving world of song.
Frugal: Can anyone control audio for anyone else, now that we can listen to our own iPods? Perhaps 2010 is the year for Frugal Scholar's playlist!
lagatta; The photo on her web site touches me deeply.
I've now downloaded (at least) one album from iTunes, and am looking forward to playing it in tribute later today.
I am sorry to hear of her passing.
I'm glad that she has left her music behind, it will be included in my playlist.
Usually it is very rare, except for childhood leukemia, where a lot of research has been done and progress made.
But I beg everyone not to see Lhasa just as the disease that killed her. By her comments, she had no use for that reductive attitude. She was not a "cautionary lesson" that we must always live in fear; she was a creative artist. There is no evidence that she did not seek treatment when there was something wrong.