Lila Downs
Lila Downs ( born September 19, 1968 in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, Mexico ) is a Mexican- American singer. Their music is a mixture of different styles, while she reaches back often to indigenous music from their Mexican homeland, from the cultures of the Mixtec, Zapotec, Maya and Nahuatl. She has a clear political claim, it expresses in the texts.
Life
Downs grew up as the daughter of a Scottish- American father (Allen Downs ) and a Mixtec mother ( Anita Sánchez ) in the state of Oaxaca, in Minnesota and in Southern California.
She started music and anthropology at the University of Minnesota to study. As a fan of the band Grateful Dead, she turned entirely on the singing. Back in Mexico, she discovered the music again as a key to their indigenous background. She learned the American jazz saxophonist Paul Cohen, with whom she performed in clubs in Oaxaca and Philadelphia. With him, she realized all their musical projects. She toured many countries of America and Europe. Downs and Cohen are now living in New York and in Coyoacán, one of the beautiful old colonial neighborhoods of Mexico City, in which the Blue House is where Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera lived.
She became well known through the participation in the film Frida about the life of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
Discography
- Ofrenda (1994 )
- Azulão: En vivo con Lila Downs (1996 )
- La Sandunga (1997)
- Yutu Tata / Arbol de la vida (2000)
- La línea / Border (2002) ( on the heavily fortified border between Mexico and the USA, for the migrants who die crossing the border step, and their struggles )
- Frida (2002) ( soundtrack to the film of the same; Lila Downs is represented by multiple pieces )
- Una Sangre (2004)
- La cantina - entre copa y copa (2006)
- Ojo de culebra / Shake Away ( 2008)
- The Very Best of El Alma de Lila Downs (2009)
- En Paris - Live a FIP (2010)
- Pecados y milagros (2011)
- Canciones pa ' todo el año (2012 )