9.4.18

SORAYA, “CASI”

2nd August, 2003

Wiki | Video

My careless lack of engagement with Latin pop (a few odds and ends excepted) until circa 2010 has been a drag on my analytic and appreciative capacity throughout this blog, but I don't know that I've ever felt it weigh so heavily as it does here. Soraya was entirely new to me: and she never should have been.

Like Shakira, she was a Colombian of Lebanese heritage; unlike her, she grew up in the United States in working-class circumstances. Her mother died of breast cancer in 1992; two years later, she landed a major-label recording contract on the strength of her singing and songwriting. Her first three albums, released between 1996 and 2000, were all released in both English- and Spanish-language editions, and had some success in both markets, gaining some Adult Contemporary play in English and some Latin Pop play in Spanish. Although she sang in Spanish, her music was very much in line with Anglophone singer-songwriter conventions: Carole King and Sheryl Crow seemed to be her lodestars.

But shortly after her 2000 album was released, she was diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer herself. She took three years off to fight it, and in 2003 released her fourth, self-titled album, also released in two different editions (although the English-language version was not entirely in English). The first single from the record, "Casi" (almost), was her first, and only, Hot Latin #1 hit.

It's a strong pop/rock song in the 90s post-alternative mold, guitar-led without being aggressive or leaving her excellent sense of rhythm behind. The lyrics are vague enough to be cast in a romantic situation -- "I almost gave up... until I thought of you" -- but are certainly applicable to her experience as a survivor. She had been a vocal proponent of breast cancer support and education before, thanks to her mother's death, but her activism increased since her remission. It would not be enough; in 2006, after a fifth and final album, she succumbed to cancer.

I can see -- or rather hear -- why she didn't leave much of a footprint on the wider Latin Pop landscape: her folky, harmony-heavy pop songs were rather old-fashioned and rarely particularly distinctive, and even before her diagnosis she had no interest in playing up her sex appeal. The Colombian-American community is too small for her to have become a Selena-like icon, and although she won a Latin Grammy for her self-titled comeback, she was neither ahead of trends like Shakira nor operating within a longstanding Latin tradition like India.

But I'm glad I got to hear "Casi." It's a good song.

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