Biography
Music has always been a long and winding road.  When I was young I would get the chills thinking about singing for big audiences.  I still get goose bumps when I hear big sounds, like symphonic strings or layered voices, especially in original pop music.  Interesting combinations of instruments and parts.  Simple voices and big messages.  Music has in recent years also led me down the road of all my most held passions and given me the opportunity to talk to audiences about music, songwriting, global warming and the environment, and now, freedom for women through the Daughters of Cambodia project.

I think of myself as a unique combination of musician, elf, thinker, hippie and lover, and a goal-oriented Capricorn.  I feel strongly that individuals can change the world, that people are getting better, that every bit of life around us is a miracle and I marvel at the amazing creatures of this planet.  I hope to affect as much positive change in the world as possible.

My first EP Stars in the Attic came out in 2006 following a move from Philadelphia to St. Louis and was a great experience.  We made the record near my hometown with the production talents of Myles Shaw.  After spending a couple of years performing and touring in the US and some shows in Canada I traveled to Seoul, South Korea for three months of shows every night.  I came home tired, in love, and with a little money in my pocket.  I released my second EP, On Your Roof that Fall, 2008.

I’ve had lots of influences over the years.  My parents listened to the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and CSNY at home, and I still love Neil Young today.  Also the songwriting of Tom Waits, Paul Simon and Rickie Lee Jones.  I loved Peter Gabriel in the 90’s, and fell in love with Chet Baker’s singing around that time.  While studying jazz my biggest vocal influence was Nancy Wilson. I'm currently in love with the sounds of New Orleans.

While in St. Louis, I was nominated in the 2009 Riverfront Times Music Awards for Best Singer-Songwriter, which is quite something considering that just a couple of years before I was unheard of in town. There's definitely a very warm place in my heart for St. Louis and I'm always missing it a little.

Just as music always does, it led me last year down a new path that has made a stop at an issue that as an artist and a human being my heart just cannot get around.  It is the deeply damaging practice happening in our time of people selling things they don’t actually own.  Happening all over the world what’s being stolen and sold are no longer solely our resources like oil, minerals or the wood from forests.  Something more unthinkable.  Another person’s freedom.

My new record First We Cry, Then We Laugh, is an album of songs shining a light on human trafficking, specifically in Cambodia.  This new project, raising awareness about the forced prostitution of girls there is called Daughters of Cambodia.  This project raised money to produce a collection of songs written for the survivors of sexual slavery.  Songs of healing, songs of empowerment, awareness, and the need for women’s safety around the world are central themes. I am seeing 2012 as a year filled with many new shows nationwide. (If you'd like to find out about bringing a Daughters of Cambodia performance to your city, please contact me-- leslie@lesliesanazaro.com or daughtersofcambodia@gmail.com).

This journey through life and music continues to amaze me, to grow me and give me renewing strength to learn and experience bigger things, to help in larger ways.  I hope that you, too feel inspired to say out loud that thing you’ve been quiet about, to think in terms of your greatest goals and not the logistics that prevent them, and to surround yourself with those people who will encourage and support your role in growing this life experience, central to all of us, into something magical.

 

 

“There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don’t you?” ~Rumi