latin · mexico · mexican

Lila Downs

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About

Lila Downs (born Ana Lila Downs Sánchez on 9 September 1969 in Tlaxiaco) is a Mexican singer and actress. She performs her own compositions and the works of others in multiple genres, as well as tapping into Mexican traditional and popular music. Downs grew up there and in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She began singing ranchera music at an early age, and later sang at the fiestas of the towns in her mountain region, la Mixteca. 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, which tap into native Mesoamerican music of the Mixtec, Zapotec, Maya and Nahuatl cultures. Cohen went on to become both Downs's husband and her artistic director. Downs is the daughter of Mixtec cabaret singer Anita Sánchez and Allen Downs, a Scottish/English-American professor of art and cinematographer from Minnesota. She grew up partly in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, partly in California as a teen, and Minnesota as an adult where she studied voice and social anthropology at the University of Minnesota. She also studied in a school of fine arts (Bellas Artes) in Oaxaca when she later returned to Mexico where she learned to weave. In following the years, Downs and her band toured widely in Mexico, South America, the US and Europe. She was also heard in a duet with Caetano Veloso for the soundtrack to the movie Frida in a song, Burn it Blue, that was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song and that she performed at the 75th Academy Awards.

Source: Last.fm