Since her career began in 1981, Gerrard has been involved in a wide range of projects. She received a Golden Globe Award for the music score to the film Gladiator, on which she collaborated with Hans Zimmer.
Lisa Gerrard was born on 12 April 1961 in Melbourne, and grew up in the suburb of Prahran with her Irish immigrant parents. She has said that she grew up with "Mediterranean music blaring out of the houses" and that this influenced her music, particularly on later Dead Can Dance albums and in her solo and collaborative works.
Gerrard's first foray into forming bands and creative music-making was in Melbourne's little band scene, an experimental post-punk scene which flourished from 1978 until 1981. It was at one of these little band events that she first met Dead Can Dance co-founder Brendan Perry. Perry recalls, "It never occurred to me that we would one day collaborate musically together because at the time I thought her music was too avant garde. I particularly remember one song that she sang about finding a man in the park and asking her mother if she could bring him home to keep in her wardrobe as she attacked this chinese dulcimer with two bamboo sticks".
Dead Can Dance originally formed as a quartet in 1981 in Melbourne, but in 1982 moved to London with members Gerrard, Brendan Perry and bass player Paul Erikson. Shortly after coming to England, Erikson flew back to Australia, leaving the band as a duo. Dead Can Dance recorded eight albums on the 4AD Records recording label beginning with the self-titled Dead Can Dance LP in 1984. In 2005, the song "Nierika" became part of the opening titles for Mexican television station TV Azteca's soap opera "La Chacala". The band split in 1998, but reunited in 2005 for a world tour. In 2012, the band announced a new world tour to coincide with the release of their new album, Anastasis.
Gerrard possesses the vocal range of a contralto but can also reach upward into the mezzo-soprano range. Her voice has been described as rich, deep, dark, mournful and unique.
Examples of Gerrard's mezzo-soprano range include the songs "The Host of Seraphim", "Elegy", "Space Weaver", "Come This Way" and "One Perfect Sunrise". Gerrard however performs more predominantly in the dramatic contralto range in her other songs, "Sanvean", "Sacrifice", "Largo", "Lament" and "Not Yet".
Gerrard sings many of her songs, such as "Now We Are Free", "Come Tenderness", "Serenity", "The Valley of the Moon", "Tempest", "Pilgrimage of Lost Children", "Coming Home" and "Sanvean" in idioglossia. With respect to such work she has said, "I sing in the language of the Heart. It's an invented language that I've had for a very long time. I believe I started singing in it when I was about 12. Roughly that time. And I believed that I was speaking to God when I sang in that language."
Gerrard was married to Polish graphic design artist and music producer Jacek Tuschewski, with whom she has a daughter (born 1992).
Her nephew Jack Gerrard plays for Cairns post-hardcore act Almost a Square as the drummer and back-up vocalist.
La Bas
Lisa Gerrard Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Hold our hollow ...
Til we swallow ourselves now
Again
We the ashes
We spend our days like matches
And we burn our ships as ...
We know not the fire in which we burn
And we sing, and we sing and the flames go higher
We read not the pages which we turn
But we sing, and we sing, and we sing, and we sing
We???
Like this, like this
We ...
The lost and found out
We are all finished
Lisa Gerrard's song "La Bas" (Song of the Drowned) is a hauntingly beautiful ballad about life's transience and human nature's inescapable fate. The first stanza invites listeners to contemplate the transitory nature of human existence, as the "drowned" hold their "hollow" in the water until they "swallow" themselves. The second stanza likens human life to that of ashes, which we spend our days like matches until we inevitably burn our ships and come to the end.
The chorus symbolically represents the inevitability of existence and the power we have to choose how we live our lives in the time we have. The lines "We know not the fire in which we burn / And we sing, and we sing and the flames go higher / We read not the pages which we turn / But we sing, and we sing, and we sing, and we sing" suggest that we often live our lives without fully comprehending the consequences of our actions. Despite this, the chorus is a call to live each moment to the fullest, and cherish each passing second as if it's the last.
Overall, "La Bas" is a powerful and moving ballad that invites its listeners to meditate on the purpose and value of life, and encourages us to live each moment as if it's the only one that mattered.
Line by Line Meaning
We the drowned
We, the ones who have drowned (in water or in sorrow)
Hold our hollow ...
We hold on to our emptiness (the hollowness within us)
Til we swallow ourselves now
Until we consume ourselves completely (physically or emotionally)
Again
We repeat this cycle time and again
We the ashes
We, who have been reduced to ashes (either literally or figuratively)
We spend our days like matches
We live our lives recklessly, burning brightly and quickly like a matchstick
And we burn our ships as ...
And we destroy our own means of escape - as if there is no turning back
The end
We embrace our own destruction as the inevitable end
We know not the fire in which we burn
We are not aware of the source of our own demise
And we sing, and we sing and the flames go higher
Despite our lack of understanding, we continue singing and fueling the fire of destruction
We read not the pages which we turn
We keep moving forward without truly absorbing or comprehending the lessons of our experiences
But we sing, and we sing, and we sing, and we sing
Still, we persist in our song - perhaps out of ignorance, desperation, or simply habit
We???
Unclear - perhaps the singer is addressing a group of people or trying to convey a sense of uncertainty or confusion
Like this, like this
In this way, exactly as described above
We ...
Perhaps an incomplete thought - the singer pauses before continuing
The lost and found out
We who are both lost and discovered, simultaneously adrift and acutely aware of our situation
We are all finished
We have reached an endpoint, a conclusion, a finality - with no clear indication of what comes next
Writer(s): Lisa Germaine Gerrard
Contributed by Caden E. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
Tammy Baker Samuelson
on Mirror Medusa
Does anyone know what she's saying in the song Mirror Medusa?
Becky Evans Davis
on Sleep
so deep in slumber that you shan't know you're wanderin'.
sleep
Becky Evans Davis
on Sleep
my ear attends to you