Lila Downs
Mexican-American singer Lila Downs is the daughter of an American father from Minnesota and a Mexican mother of Mixtec Indian descent, and her triple heritage-Anglo, Latino and Native American-informs her music and her art.
Downs was born in 1968, in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, and grew up there and in Minneapolis. Her mother had been a cabaret singer and taught Lila at an early age. She was singing rancheras at the age of 8, and sang at the local fiestas of the towns in her region as a girl.
She sang with the band Los Cadetes de Yodoyuxi and later with La Trova Serrana, a group of folk musicians from the Zapotec town of Guelatao, Oaxaca. At that time she met her musical collaborator Paul Cohen and began to create her own musical compositions.
While the concept of identity is an obvious influence on Lila Downs' latest album, ONE BLOOD (Una Sangre), the Mexican-American singer continues using her creative impulse to explore what brings us together rather than that which divides. Her fourth and most diverse effort to date, ONE BLOOD draws from a host of styles and sounds to produce one of 2004's most eclectic – and appealing – records.
This is not to say ONE BLOOD is without roots. For Downs, the daughter of a Scottish-American cinematographer/painter and Mixtec-Indian vocalist, expressing Latin culture has been a lifelong passion. Combining formal vocal training with an extreme emotional intensity, her remarkable voice is as varied in range as the musicians with whom she performs. A Brazilian guitarist, a Cuban bassist, a Chilean drummer, a Mexican harpist, and a pianist/saxophonist/musical director from New Jersey each brings his particular musical slant to create a crisp, jazzy Latin sound leaning in no single direction but inclusive of all of them.
With a surge in Latin culture in America, with film and music leading the way in our expanding global education, Downs' lyrical penchant highlights her heritage. "Mexican culture in the U.S. is kind of invisible, because it's the working and sub-working class in this country," she says. "It's a side we all don't want to look at because it's painful – for us being Mexican, and when you're not Mexican, you often don't notice it. That is what's so beautiful about having a renaissance of Mexico through certain films and music; people are learning more about our Indian roots, which wasn't happening before."
Within the scope of identity, ONE BLOOD is rich with important subjects, and Downs takes them on with rare vivacity. Her voice ranges from inviting, as on Dignificada – a gorgeous, guitar-driven song about a female lawyer assassinated in 2002 for fighting for human rights – to downright penetrating, with selections like the darkly enchanted Cielo Rojo. Engaging in the serious side of politics and social issues, Downs doesn't forget to have fun, as on the percussive-driven cover of La Bamba, originally made famous by Ritchie Valens (and again by Los Lobos), dating back a century to the son tradition in southern Veracruz.
"La Bamba is something I've wanted to do for a long time," she says. "I thought 'How can we relate to our African ancestors, our third roots as we call them.' It's a bridge between more modern times and the past when this piece was created. It's also about a war that took place in Veracruz; there's a verse that goes 'Will I be a marine? I never ever will be a marine.' I kind of took advantage of that."
A recent move to New York City furthers Downs' sonic panoramic view. Now residing in the planet's largest global village, it's a world away from her dual upbringing in Minnesota and the Sierra Madre Mountains of Oaxaca. Living in such varied environments, she took after her mother's stage career by singing mariachi tunes at age 8. Her career continued to evolve, studying voice as a teenager in Los Angeles and then in Oaxaca City at Bellas Artes, before graduating with a double degree in voice and anthropology from the University of Minnesota. Her constant love for folk traditions would be enhanced when she began her own nomadic travels following the Grateful Dead, making and selling jewelry to afford to roam from town to town.
Here we see upbringing begets career. It's no wonder the same album can profess such songs as her fascinating take on La Cucaracha, a Mexican folk song about giving soldiers marijuana to be able to fight in the revolution, to the prolifically upbeat Viborita, a fun number about "the little serpent of the sea." Another highlight is Brown Paper People, with its poetics as beautiful as the presentation: 'See a continent hidden/see a paradise crazy/see the gods who were strangers in liquid gold cities/see the brown paper people/see the footprint and the money/see the funny bird snake man/see the gold in his garden.'
"That song is about this notion of colonization humans have had, about power over others," she says. "The beast within us is still quite alive and I can't figure out how to change that, so I write about it."
Equally focused on the topic of gender, Downs has taken the responsibility of being a powerful social figure with undeniable integrity. Her first three releases – LA SANDUNGA, BORDER (La Linea), and TREE OF LIFE (Yutu Tata) – all tackle the subject of the empowerment of females, from both a social as well as individual perspective, and ONE BLOOD continues this tradition.
Downs' greatest creative asset is her ability to touch the universal by singing about the deeply personal, and there is no greater example than Mother Jones. Dedicated to Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, an Irish native who ended up becoming one of the 19th century's greatest labor reformers, the blues-based song jumps with evident immediacy while retaining a mellow, accordion-backed vibe. Jones herself once commented "I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hell-raiser" – and you can't help but get the feeling Downs shares the sentiment.
Within all of this social commentary, an eminent spiritual quality pervades Downs' music. It's not some lofty ideal of divinity, but rather a strong sense of community and its relationship with history. The idea of "one blood" is appealing on paper, but Downs uses her academic investigation and folk knowledge to find examples, constantly re-establishing the Mexican diaspora in modernity through art. Her love and training in the folk stories of opera, along with studies in the symbolism created by Triqui women in their weaving, show just two aspects of
connecting fable and reality. To her, both ancient and modern Mexican culture has much to teach the world, and she fully engages in sharing that information.
Downs is well aware of these seeming paradoxes; while she explores and shares the history of her people to the world beyond, she knows full well the root of her art – all art, in fact – can only be felt and not exploited. The key to evolving, artistically and socially, is something experienced only by each individual. It is those individuals who share their knowledge who truly help the entire community along; ONE BLOOD is one further testament from Lila Downs to this expansion, as necessary as it is enlightening.