The best music is closer than it appears

Latino Leaders: The National Magazine of the Successful American Latino, June-July, 2004 by Alexis Langagne

These recent music productions are beautiful, exciting, and represent many cultures around the world. You will notice these works really merge all musical--and many spoken (sung)--languages into a common artistic expression.

Lhasa: The Living Road

ROCK

Born in the US, raised in Mexico, lived in Montreal and now in France, Lhasa De Sela is a real "World" artist; an astonishing eclectic, bohemian, and intense singer and composer. Following her debut album La Llorona, Lhasa sings describing a metaphor of life as a road, with her deep, melancholic, and enchanting voice, and this time using Spanish, French, and English lyrics. Can you imagine a beautiful combination of instruments including piano, cello, percussion, trumpets, and vibraphone; mixing alternative rock, Mexican corridor, and Eastern European music genres subtly influenced by Tom Waits?

Laco Tayfa: Hicaz Dolap

JAZZ

Extraordinary virtouso Turkish band that will shock you by merging Romanian-Gypsy sounds with fusion jazz, rock, Arabic melodies, and dance beats. Led by clarinetist Husnu Senlendirici, Laco Tayfa combine, electric and folk instruments, showing that all members of the band play at the heights of the most acclaimed jazz musicians in the western world. The second album of the kind demonstrates how creativity and music technique can get along, and how music boundaries disappear when different cultures and styles are perfectly blended in such a spontaneous manner.

This is emotional, energetic, and profound music. Music composed by artists that take the risk to explore unknown corners of our music World, creating new worlds as they explore. We are so lucky to have these artists in our world, artists that contribute to humanity with honest, creative, and everlasting musical experiences.

Alexis Langagne, The author is a passionate music listener and drummer, has recorded albums and performed live in Mexico, Japan, and the US; now a Mexican executive working for a Fortune 20 company, living in Houston and reachable at: alexis_language@hotmail.com