RIP: Lhasa de Sela

Spellbound. That's how I was the first time I heard Lhasa's debut album, La Llorona, when it came out in 1998.

I was living in southern Colorado, working at NPR-affiliate, KRZA. Her story - born of Mexican and American parents in the Catskills town of Big Indian - connected my two worlds of Upstate New York (where I'm from) and greater Aztlan, the chicano world I was living in. She was just about my age, too.

Lhasa was a young, visionary artist with a poetic vocabulary and a haunting voice both strong and soft.

I hadn't heard the news that she died of breast cancer on New Year's Day until this morning. It's very sad to lose a true muse.