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Americas |
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Lila Downs (Mexico)
Song : La Niña
Album : Border (Narada World, USA)
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Sporting long straight jet black hair and brightly coloured huipils (sleeveless Native American tunics) Lila Downs cuts a striking figure on any stage. She's a dramatic performer who seems to inhabit the characters that people her songs, not just through empathetic body language but also with her extraordinary ability as a mimic and a startling vocal range.
Born in 1968 to a North American father and a Mixtec Indian mother, she grew up shuttling between Mexico and the U.S. and spent many years grappling with issues of identity and its corollary - vocation. Even though her mother had earned a living as a singer in the bars of Mexico City, and Lila actually started singing mariachi songs at the age of eight, the path she took to becoming a professional musician was long and circuitous. She studied voice and anthropology in both countries, and even had thoughts of becoming an opera singer at one point. You can still hear echoes of that ambition in her vocal style.
It was only in the early 1990s, when she was asked to translate documents relating to the deaths of people who had attempted to cross the U.S./Mexico border, that she became inspired to tell their stories by writing songs. Her first effort was called Ofrenda and can be heard on her debut album La Sundunga, and it was during this time that she began to work with local groups in Oaxaca and met her current musical and romantic partner Paul Cohen.
In the last few years, high profile festival appearances in Latin America, Europe and the U.S., coupled with the international release of her second and third albums have brought increasing critical acclaim . Tree Of Life (1999) includes several songs sung entirely in Náhuatl, Zapotec and Mixtec - just three of more than 60 indigenous languages still spoken in Mexico. With La Linea (2001), Lila turned her attention once again to the subject of the border, singing in English, Spanish and Mayan. The pan-American make-up of her band is reflected in novel arrangements for Mexican cumbia, classic ranchera, waltz, bolero and original compositions which experiment with rap, jazz and reggae influences, among others. There's even a radical re-write of two Woody Guthrie compositions.
Lately, Lila has even dabbled in cinema. She can be seen performing several of her songs in Frida, Salma Hayek's new movie about the life of Mexico's iconic painter Frida Kahlo.
Jon Lusk 2002
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