When Perla Batalla takes the stage, there’s no telling what will come out of her mouth. It may be a Spanish ballad she’s adapted, or a Leonard Cohen song plucked from her years of singing backup for him. It could be jazz, or a Cohen cover in Spanish. Batalla, born in Los Angeles to a Mexican father and Argentine mother, has a way of blending her influences so that the listener can be drawn to it no matter the language.
“I’ve been a songwriter and involved with different aspects of music, but I’ve come to the fact that I love to sing a good song, and performing, with the live energy and people in the room, may be the most exciting thing a person can do,” said Batalla by phone from New York, where she was performing. “To share music and art live, that really is the point.”
She grew up in her parent’s Spanish language music store, surrounded by traditional music.
“The Mexican music was a huge force in my childhood,” said Batalla. “My mother almost negated her Argentine existence because she loved everything about the Mexican culture. As far as we knew we were Mexican-American; we were Mexican through and through.”
Yet, at 16, feeling confined by a strict father, she left home.
“I was singing a lot of jazz and trying to do a wide range of things to see what everything was like—to get away from my roots, get out into the world and discover new things,” she said.
A story to tell
Then, in 1988, she met Leonard Cohen and sang backup for him until 1993, when she began her solo career. Cohen, she said, changed everything for her.
“I said, oh my goodness, here’s a man writing his own poetry, just having his heart on his sleeve and writing these incredible songs, and there’s no doubt it’s as good as it gets in terms of songwriting,” she said. “And that inspiration led me to write my own songs.”
Some in her situation may have felt intimidated to write their own music when compared to Cohen’s. For his “Ballad of the Absent Mare,” which Batalla sings on Bird on a Wire, her 2005 tribute album to Cohen, he wrote, “Oh, the world is sweet, the world is wide/ And she’s there where the light and the darkness divide/ And the steam’s coming off her, she’s huge and she’s shy/ And she steps on the moon when she paws at the sky.”
“I started out as a songwriter and heard Leonard’s lyrics, and I thought, ‘Forget about it, you can’t do that,’” said Battalla. “But it was Leonard who said—he was so encouraging. I’d write a stupid little song, and he’d say, ‘Oh, it’s great.’ And I’d say, ‘No, it’s silly.’ And he’d say ‘No, darling, it’s great. Everybody has a story to tell. Why shouldn’t you tell yours?’ That gave me the confidence that every story I tell will be mine, and as long as it’s true to me there’s no judgment about it. Otherwise, you’d just be paralyzed, and you’d never do anything.”
After embarking on her solo career, she soon found her way back to her roots, releasing the highly personal Mestiza in 1998, an album that explored her experience of growing up in two worlds—that of her parents and that of the United States. Then, Discoteca Batalla, named for her parents’ record shop, featured Spanish language classics in Batalla’s style.
“I took those Mexican staple songs, and sometimes I changed the arrangements completely,” said Batalla. “My mother was a purist about the music, and she’d say, ‘What are you doing?’ And my father, who grew up with it, thoroughly loved everything I did.”
One example of her ability to transform a classic is her version of “Cucurrucucu Paloma.” It’s a traditional song usually sung with a dramatic, emotive mariachi band. But Batalla stripped it down and uncovered a beautiful, honest song.
“I loved that song so much, but I knew it had to be a lament, not the big mariachi extravaganza, because it’s someone who’s heartbroken,” she said. “His world is crashing down around him, and the bird coming to sing to him is a bird of hope. I wanted it to be a song of tenderness, almost a lullaby, that it would give you new hope that tomorrow is another day. … People are moved by that song whether they understand the language or not.”
Bringing the love
Batalla has been recognized by the United Nations and other organizations for her outreach work with youth. For two decades, she’s been going to schools—typically ones with high populations of at-risk teens—and performing and talking with the students.
“Some of them are on their way to a life of crime and jail, and others are just kind of feeling lost,” she says. “I tell them, “Listen, you don’t have to be a big star … ’cause that’s not the point. The point is to be creative, do something that puts beauty into the world because that will make you feel better about the world and yourself. And anyone can do that. You don’t have to have money to put some beauty into the world through music or art.”
She became compelled to do this work, in part, after having a child, Eva, who’s now a teenager. But she also remembers what it was like to leave home as a teenager and have to work hard for what she has.
“So I kind of see these students that I meet as my own kid—I just give love,” she says. “Some of these young people are gang members or in trouble, and they don’t want to listen to me. I get that. But I shoot out this unconditional love I have for them, and it’s real. I actually feel this enormous connection, and I have this enormous desire for things to be OK for them, because I understand how tough there lives may be. And they feel it, and they get it. I’ve done this now for a good 20 years, and it never fails. If you give love, people will receive it.”
And when Batalla opens Artown on June 30, Reno audiences will be receiving it all—her jazz, her Cohen, her Spanish language music.
“I really do love all these styles of music so much, I find a way to get it into a concert,” said Batalla. “I fit them all in somehow, and we have a good time. I can’t imagine just showing up and doing just jazz or this or that. It’s so much more fun when I can do it all.”