Lhasa de Sela

Maybe it was Lhasa's unconventional upbringing that gave her such a unique vision, or maybe it was always within her. Whatever the reason, she stood as one of the most idiosyncratic Mexican-American performers, fully aware of the tradition, but putting her own spin on it. Born Lhasa de Sela in the tiny village of Big Indian, New York, her mother, Alexandra Karam, was an actress and photographer, and her father, Alejandro Sela, was a Mexican professor teaching in upstate New York. The big family (three sisters, three half-sisters, and three half-brothers) was fairly nomadic a...