Lhasa

Lhasa de Sela died on the first day of this year, succumbing to breast cancer at the age of 37. This eponymous album—the last of the three she recorded—is now freighted with the loss of an interesting and doomed young woman. Those who never heard this distinctive singer/songwriter have missed out on a unique musical sensibility, a woman who sang in French, Spanish, Yiddish and a few other languages, as well. This last album is all in English, and it showcases the poetry of her lyrics. Lhasa spent part of her childhood in a converted school bus as her folks made their way back and forth across the U.S., Mexico and elsewhere. Perhaps the worldliness of her oeuvre was engendered in those travels. Lhasa brought an unusually cosmopolitan voice to her music. She really didn’t sound like anyone else, and in a world where so much music sounds like it was squeezed from the same grinder, the loss of her uniqueness is a significant loss, indeed. La Llorona, her first album, and The Living Road, her penultimate record, are also worth owning. Her heart is always on full display, even on songs in languages the listener may not know.