Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

Nobody could accuse Lhasa de Sela of taking the easy route to stardom. The Montreal musician insists on singing songs entirely in Spanish at a time when other Quebecbased acts going for a wider audience—even francophone ones— have opted for English. Yet Lhasa’s exotic sound, steeped in melancholic Mexican ballads, has clearly struck a chord. The 25-year-old singer’s debut album, La Llorona, recently went gold in Canada with sales of 50,000 and earned her two Juno nominations, for best global album and best new solo artist Meanwhile, her performances have drawn rave reviews for their intense theatricality. Born in upstate New York to a Mexican father and an American mother, a teacher and phot...

She ran away to join the circus. Although she’d been signed to prestigious Atlantic Records and was being touted as an Edith Piaf for the new millennium, Lhasa de Sela turned her back on the music business. Ultimately, the runaway success of her first album, La Llorona, a stunning collection of stylized Mexican ballads and European gypsy tunes all sung in Spanish, proved to be too much for her. “I needed to get away from it for a while,” explains de Sela. “I’d been touring constantly for two years and getting offers to do these amazing gigs all over the world.  But I got badly burnt out and started experiencing these intense feelings of anxiety. I just finally had to say no to everythin...

Lhasa de Sela is a one-of-a-kind artist. In 1997, the Montreal musician released La Llorona, a stunning collection of Mexican ballads and European gypsy tunes all sung in Spanish that sold half a million copies around the world. Seven years later, she issued The Living Road, an equally mesmerizing album sung in Spanish, French and English. Now, six years on, the never-in-a-hurry Lhasa is back with her first album sung entirely in English. Songs like the harp-laden “Rising” are at once haunting and deeply hypnotic. April 2009