Divine Global
The Power is Yours!
CARMEN HARRA
A new album by Carmen Harra has shaken music media to its ageist core! For the first time, a woman in her Sixties has unleashed an album with at least four hits that are set to become nightclub classics. Behind Closed Doors is not Carmen’s first album, but it is undoubtedly her sharpest, with rhythmic, catchy, Latino numbers which made Radio DJ Paul Watts “jump up and down” in his seat. The album oozes vitality, with upbeats in O Malea and Subete Conmigo that can lift any atmosphere and pervade your head all day.
A widow at the age of 53, Carmen poured her grief into music and worked rigorously on albums covering several genres that her husband would love and that could, in her words, “make his soul dance”. Now in her 60s, Carmen has reinvented herself yet again into the sexy, sassy woman writhing with topless dancers in Disfruta. Carmen believes that music is healing, and that the latest album is her most therapeutic yet. She should have some idea, having published 8 books, gained a PhD in psychoanalysis and counselled people for over 23 years, including Jennifer Lopez and Hilary Clinton. Perhaps because she has been singing since the age of 3 (and on TV since the age of 9), Carmen is utterly unfazed by the predominance of young singers in the music industry – “Ageism itself is passé. Women of all ages are coming out as models, actresses, leaders and singers. Our dreams have no expiry date” she laughs.
Her confidence is based on a cool, technical appreciation of her work but also has another dimension. When Carmen was only 5 years old, she ‘drowned’ in a river. She was aware of looking down at her sinking body, while she remained in a place ‘full of flowers and peace’. But her father pulled her out of the river and resuscitated her and Carmen was abruptly brought back to earth. Since that moment, Carmen says that she has the ability to see into the future. As a celebrity healer and psychic, Carmen has over a million followers online and she is a regular guest on US and European chat-shows.
Carmen grew up in a remote village in Transylvania, Romania. She remembers having no running water, cooking over a fire and no toys except sweetcorn husks which she and her sister would dress up as dolls. Once the family moved to the capital, Bucharest, a life of subsistence farming was replaced with the drastic food shortages- including long bread queues, and intense political repression under the Ceausescu regime. Carmen said “I sang to an electrical company to get my family’s first fridge and again in a Russian store to get my family’s first TV”. Her life changed when she got her first record contract at the age of 16 and she conquered America in her 20s, falling in love with Virgil, an antiques dealer, commemorated passionately in The Best Part. As a singer and a scholar, Carmen settled easily into the flux of New York. Despite her poor background, Carmen was swept up in a cycle of Manhattan parties, millionaire balls and events in the Hamptons although she once found herself dining opposite Donald Trump who said, rather disparagingly, “What are YOU doing here?”. Decades later, Carmen is still very much here, living in Florida, speaking and singing in five languages and, she says, working to “fight prejudice and heal the world” through music. Behind Closed Doors, with its mixture of tender ballads and pumping pop is certainly a unifying force, boosted by the luscious energy of Latino Miami.
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To purchase ‘Behind Closed Doors’ click here –
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