Lila Downs Tickets

About The Lila Downs

She got together with Philadelphia-based jazz pianist Paul Cohen, and bloomed a professional and personal relationship whose first fruit was the self-released, cassette-only, Ofrenda in 1994. Followed two years later by another cassette, the live Azuláo: En Vivo Con Lida Downs, one of whose songs won Best Original Latin Jazz composition in a Philadelphia poll. Along with jazz, she was slowly developing a more intense, folkloric style that began to rear its head on 1997's La Sandunga (released in the U.S. on BMG in 1999), whose title track and "La Llorana" offered a hearty passion not to be heard on her jazzier efforts. That vocal promise was fulfilled in 2000 with the release of Tree of Life, the lyrics of which were largely derived from the religious codices of the Mixteca and Zapotec people. The album was recorded in Oaxaca, where Downs and Cohen were sustained by a foundation grant, although their home base remains Mexico City.

Lila Downs (born 1968 in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, Mexico) is the daughter of a Mixtec woman and Allen Downs, a Scottish/English-American professor of art and cinematographer from Minnesota. Her growing up years were partly scattered in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, partly in the U.S. states in California as a teen, and Minnesota as an adult, where she graduated from the University of Minnesota in voice and anthropology. Downs grew up with the enculturation of her father, a professor from the United States, but eventually turned her back on it to explore the tradition of her mother, a Mixteca Indian from Mexico. In doing so, she's created a very individual strain of song that has indigenous Mexican roots and North American sonorities. She grew to love music, specifically classical and opera, and began studying those in colleges. Her compositions vary from native Meso-american music of the Mixtec, Zapotec, to Maya and Nahuatl cultures.

She was also heard in 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. In her current years, Downs and her band have toured widely in Mexico, South America, the US and Europe. Other songs that she performed on the soundtrack are "Benediction and Dream" ,"Estrella Oscura," and "La Llorona." Other movies with a Lila Downs song are "Tortilla Soup" and "Real Women Have Curves". Downs resides in Coyoacán, a neighborhood of Mexico City.