The Montreal songstress muses on travel, fairytales, and antlers
by Susan Krashinsky
If you've been in a café in Montreal over the past eight years or so, you've heard Lhasa. But this is more than just background music. With influences from old Mexican ballads to klezmer, her songs are sometimes haunting, sometimes farcical, sometimes devastating; capped off with a fearlessly passionate singing style. If Italo Calvino's book Invisible Cities had a soundtrack, this would be it. So it's no wonder that Montreal has embraced her, and the rest of the world has followed suit.
Montréal Magazine: You have been referred to as a nomad, from your childhood in America and Mexico, to touring, to the title of your second album, The Living Road. What does the road mean to you?
Lhasa: Movement. Change. Time. Adventure. Accidents of all kinds. A story. A life. A billion lives. Also back pain. Truck stops. Stiff legs. Dirty bathrooms. Overcooked carrots.
MM: Your first album La Llorona was named after a Hispanic legend of a woman whose ghost roams the riverside, crying for her dead children. Why did you choose this title?
Lhasa: There's a line in a song from that album?"This is how I live, still singing my sorrows, wanting you to love me for my solitude." I knew there was something wrong with that reasoning, but I had to work it out.
MM: In 1999, after touring for La Llorona, you decided to run away and join the circus. This is the dream of scores of children.
Lhasa: Do children still dream about running away to the circus??My sisters are circus performers, and I was the only weirdo who wanted to make music instead - you might say that I ran away from the circus as a teenager?Heh. Circus is like the final frontier?marginal and strange?you set up a little temporary village in the middle of a city?and suddenly there's something new in their familiar world, something kind of unexpected; people living behind these fragile walls?it's a strange mix of athleticism, family life, romanticism and toughness. It's a very hard-working life and working with my sisters?gave me a new respect for them.
MM: At a recent benefit at the Ukrainian Federation, you sang a new song about a lady spider. Why do magical creatures play such a big role in your music?
Lhasa: I think I'm in denial about certain things. I'd rather sing about spiders and ships and flying fish than Hummers and fax machines.
"My sisters are circus performers, and I was the only weirdo who wanted to make music instead."
MM: If you were an imaginary creature, what would you look like?
Lhasa: I'm not sure. But when I was a little girl I desperately wanted to have antlers. And a mandolin.
MM: What is your favourite fairy tale?
Lhasa: There's a great fairy tale by the Scottish writer George MacDonald called "the Light Princess" ... The Complete Fairy Tales of George MacDonald is a great, great book. MacDonald was a friend of Lewis Carroll and Alice from Alice in Wonderland was based on one of his daughters.
MM: Why have you decided to make Montreal one of your homes?
Lhasa: I came to Montréal when I was 19 because my sisters were here?and then I met amazing people? and started to have a life here. Montréal is the healthiest and sweetest big city in the world. I love that it's bilingual. I love the mountain. I love that women can walk around here at night and not be afraid. I love the seasons and the sense of pride that you get from surviving the winter?there is so much art and creativity, and so little competition. Montréal has been really good to me.
MM: You are now in the studio. Has a theme emerged for the new album?
Lhasa: ?I'm nervous and excited. I don't know where these new songs are taking me but I have to trust them.
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