Singer Perla Batalla got a call in 1988 from Roscoe Beck, Leonard Cohen’s bass player, asking her to audition as a backing vocalist for the renowned Canadian musician. After getting off the phone, Batalla says, her first thought was “Who is Leonard Cohen?” She immediately got to work studying up on his music.
“I was enchanted,” she says. “His voice was full of gravity and sincerity. I felt I had discovered a treasure.” She loved his lyricism — growing up, Batalla listened to a lot of poetic Spanish-language music. Her father, from Mexico, was a mariachi singer. Her mother, from Argentina, owned Discoteca Batalla, a record store. “Meeting Cohen blew my mind,” Batalla says, “because I wasn’t used to hearing songs in English that were so poetic.”
In the late 1980s, Batalla was a young musician trying to make it in her home city, Los Angeles. She worked during the day and sang swing and jazz in clubs most nights. She needed a break, and she got one — after auditioning for Cohen, Batalla would sing backup for him for the next 10 years on his I’m Your Man and The Future tours. The two became very close, she says. “We were great friends until the day he died” in 2016.
Batalla, who now lives in Ojai, Calif. and New York City, will perform songs from her 2024 album, A Letter to Leonard Cohen: Tribute to a Friend, at Payomet Performing Arts Center on Tuesday, Aug. 5. She’ll be accompanied by Andy Stack on bass, Danny Fox on piano, and Dave Berger on drums. Batalla’s daughter, Eva Batalla-Mann, will sing backing vocals.
The album features Batalla covering Cohen songs and two of her originals. One original, “The L of Your First Name,” is about her friendship with Cohen. “I told him my deepest secrets,” she says. “He told me his. We trusted each other.” Their friendship didn’t lessen her profound admiration for him: “It was as if I knew Shakespeare, and we were buddies,” Batalla says. That sentiment is “all there in the song.” The track is in triple meter; she sings in a smooth, pure falsetto or a low tone rich with vibrato. The song sounds like a slow, tender dance.
“Awakened,” the first track on the album, is Batalla’s other original. It’s about “making the choice to become an artist,” she says. It’s jazzy, with uncertain harmonies — a fitting sound to accompany its theme of facing the unknown with courage.
Cohen was the one who first encouraged Batalla to seek a career as a solo artist. But even as a backup singer, she was allowed to assert herself creatively. “We were part of the arrangement,” Batalla says. “We were collaborators.” In a 1993 performance of “Democracy,” Batalla and Julie Christensen, Cohen’s other backup vocalist, open the song with strong two-part harmony before Cohen begins to sing in his deep bass. They balance and support each other as a trio.
Batalla released her debut self-titled album on Discovery Records in 1994 and has since come out with seven more. Her musical style is “global,” she says. “I have a universal approach.” Her voice has subdued power, able to belt and whisper with equal musicality.
Her latest album is not the first time she has covered Leonard Cohen. In 2004, she released Bird on the Wire: The Songs of Leonard Cohen, covering 10 songs from five albums.
On that record, Batalla sings Cohen’s 1969 song “Bird on the Wire.” In the original, Cohen sings in his unmistakable reedy yet rich timbre, the instrumentation underneath sparse and simple. Batalla’s version is very different, with lush piano and guitar providing a foundation for her strikingly emotive voice. Originally a folk song, “Bird on the Wire” is almost gospel-like in her hands.
On A Letter to Leonard Cohen, Batalla covers “You Want It Darker,” which was the last song Cohen wrote. His version opens with an eerily funky bassline before his gravelly voice enters. “If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game,” he sings. “If you are the healer, it means I’m broken and lame.” It’s a song about acceptance of death: “Hineni, hineni,” Cohen sings (meaning “Here am I” in Hebrew). “I’m ready, my Lord.”
Batalla sings the song more gently and melodically. Where Cohen voiced the line “You want it darker” as a fact, Batalla asks it as a question. Her covers of Cohen’s songs are not copies, they’re reinterpretations, yet they retain the same philosophical, musing quality that defines Cohen’s music.
The idea of singing Cohen’s songs originally seemed daunting to Batalla. After backing him up for so long, “I had it firmly implanted in my mind that no one could sing Leonard Cohen but Leonard Cohen,” she says. But his unwavering enthusiasm helped her move past that roadblock.
“I began singing his songs like an actor plays Shakespearean roles,” she says. “I felt like I had a place in his work.”
Inspired Songs
The event: Perla Batalla in concert
The time: Tuesday, Aug. 5, 7 p.m.
The place: Payomet Performing Arts Center, 29 Old Dewline Rd., North Truro
The cost: $55 to $72 at tickets.payomet.org
