LLASA DE SELA

Llasa de Sela--better known as Llasa--is a Mexican American singer who was raised south of the border and in the US, and is now living in Canada. Her music combines all three countries, and she peppers the pot with the rhythms of Latin folklore, poetry in the Andalusian tradition of Federico Garcia-Lorca, gypsy music, and norteño canciones along with French (and French-Canadian) café styles.

Llasa started singing in bars when she was thirteen and moved to Montreal at nineteen, where she sang in bars for five more years before releasing her first album in 1997, the stunning La Llorona. La Llorona is a figure from Aztec mythology who is known to lure men with Siren songs, then turn them to stone as punishment for their evil ways. Sultry, sexy, melancholy, intoxicating. Listen at your own risk. You will soon be buying copies for everyone you know.

After touring briefly, Lhasa left her singing career in 1999 and moved to France to join her three sisters in a circus/theatre company named Pocheros.

"It's poh-sher-oss, because it's a play on words. Peau, chair, os - skin, flesh and bone. My sisters have been circus performers for a long time, and I always felt that wasn't really my world. I would visit them often in their various circuses, and it's an amazing world, very different from anything else. When I needed a break from music, it just happened that my sisters were finishing a project and we were all free at the same time. So we put together a show, with a circus tent and bleachers and trailers. I sang mostly, but I also did some theatre and rhythm games and stuff like that...a contempory circus, no animals. Actually there was a singing dog." --Llasa, in the Montreal Mirror


The circus eventually reached Marseilles, and Llasa quit to write some new songs. The songs appeared on her second album, The Living Road, in 2003. Llasa will release a new album this year called "The Rising."

Enjoy her music while you can. She might run off with the circus again.




Listen to Llasa performing "El Desierto" from La Llorona by clicking button:


To visit a Llasa website (in French) click here.
For an in-depth biography from Musicalia, click here.