Friday's Grief Song, 8.4.23
"¿Qué quieres que te cante?
To know her music at all is to love her.
There is no middle ground.
So too confirms this moving write up from 2020, 10 years after her death, in the Montreal Gazette, noting “Lhasa de Sela left a small but near-flawless body of work.”
Given her body of work it proved difficult to choose which song to first share with you, as there’s a strong case to be made for her to be the Patron Saint Unawares of Tears of Things (though you may remember from an earlier Grief Song post, that Fiona Apple is another contender). However, when I began to listen to some of my favorites, I was pulled back to this one again and again. A song I first heard around 2006 from her 1997 debut album, La Llorona. A deeply sensual, blood, sweat, tears and joy tinged album sung entirely in Spanish. A song played for me by a man I was falling in love with. Hearing this song now, the sadness in it, I wonder, was this song a foreshadowing of the heartbreak we’d endure together?
"¿Qué quieres que te cante? she croons. "What do you want me to sing to you?
Enjoy this week’s grief song
Por Eso Me Quedo by Lhasa De Sela.
Por Eso Me Quedo/ that’s why I’m staying
Por Eso Me Quedo
1997
Lhasa De Sela
Así ando yo
Cantando aún mis penas
Queriendo que me ames
Para mi soledad
Y hasta que yo te quiera
¿Qué quieres que te cante?
Por eso me quedo
Ay, ay, ay, hasta el final
Y así amo yo
Con rimas tan torcidas
Buscando disonancias
Pa' mi nueva canción
Y hasta que yo te quiera
¿Qué quieres que te cante?
Por eso me quedo
Ay, ay, ay, hasta el final
Y así amo yo
Con rimas tan torcidas
Buscando disonancias
Pa' mi nueva canción
Y hasta que yo te quiera
¿Qué quieres que te cante?
Y hasta que yo te quiera
¿Qué vale lo que cante?
Por eso me quedo
Ay, ay, ay, hasta el final