If you arrive more than five minutes before vocalist Perla Batalla is scheduled to perform, don't think she's backstage exercising her voice. What Batalla is doing -- to her band's nightmare -- is deciding which songs from her three albums she'll sing.
"I love every song I sing and every lyric has to be something I want to sing or I would never do it," says Batalla in a telephone interview from her Ojai, Calif. home. "I'll never cheat an audience singing something I don't want to sing, just because it's popular.
"I choose based on my mood. It has to be what I feel in the moment, that this is me today and this is how I'm showing up like this."
Batalla kicks off her interisland tour Sunday at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She'll also perform Tuesday at Brigham Young University at Laie and, on the Big Island, Wednesday at the Kahilu Theatre in Waimea and next Friday at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.
When Batalla made her Hawaii debut three years ago, fans of Hispanic music came as much out of curiosity as they did for the love of the music. What they heard was Batalla's effortless ability to make music live and breathe.
Batalla is happy with her life in scenic Ojai, north of Los Angeles, where she recorded her latest album, "Discoteca Batalla" (named after her parents' record shop in Santa Monica). Her career goals were never to be a major star, pop or otherwise. "There was no way I would go out and be a pop star; it's not in me," she said. "I don't want to work that hard. There's too much traveling and I have a family and a nine-year-old daughter who is a huge part of everything I do. I have a life."
BATALLA'S new album is a compilation of original compositions, interspersed with traditional Spanish-language classics, arranged to reflect a rich, bi-cultural personal and musical heritage. Batalla has taken songs she heard growing up in the record store and molded their rhythmic and melodic forms to create a cross-pollination of trend and tradition; a resplendent, vibrant cultural celebration of mysticism, imagery, magic and myth.
"Everything I know about life and music, I learned at Discoteca Batalla," she said. "I named it this to honor my parents and in memory of all the good stuff about growing up there. Discoteca Batalla was a huge part of my development as a person and singer.
Dad was also a Mexican singer and radio personality, besides a record shop owner. Sitting at her mother's knee, Batalla got an education of non-stop music that cut across genres and languages.
"I remember hearing such a cross-section: Javier Solis and Lucha Reyes to Muddy Waters and John Coltrane," she said. "Mexican music was the focal point our community, but we had lots of tango and Cuban music.
"We even carried Santana, which was way modern for my parents."
As a teenager, Batalla became rebellious and set out to be different. "From the minute I was in high school, I had my parents buy me records we didn't sell in the store: Tom Waits, classical, opera," she said. "I tried everything; I went in circles ... but it made me a well-rounded musical person and I eventually came back to my heritage, because it is in my blood."
Batalla joined the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute and got roles in television and feature films doing vocals. Then she began touring and singing backup vocals with the legendary Leonard Cohen.
Over the next five years, with Cohen's encouragement, Batalla composed, arranged and wrote lyrics to her own compositions. She lived in Mexico and San Francisco, singing everything from Gershwin at the Vine Street Grill to Mexican lullabies at Luna Park.
She then set out on a solo career in 1993. "I wanted to be different, my own person away from my family when I started out. It's funny, but I had to go there to be able to want to do this to come back home."
Though the majority of her audiences have been Anglo, with the release of "Discoteca Batalla," more Hispanics have been coming to her concerts.
"I am very pleasantly surprised," she said.
But the message remains the same.
"My music is very hopeful and accepting," she says. "The lyrics reminds us that we are all just human and can't be too hard on ourselves.
"I hope it brings comfort and hope -- like it did for me when I was a little girl."
Perla Batalla
Where: Orvis Auditorium, University of Hawaii at ManoaWhen: 7:30 p.m. Sunday
Tickets: $20 general; $15 military, students, seniors and UH faculty and staff
Call: 956-6878
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