The story of singer and songwriter Lila Downs’ journey toward self-discovery, along with topics she explores in her own work, can serve as lights illuminating Mexican-Americans and their struggles navigating dual countries and cultures.
Yet Downs’ background is not typical for many Mexican-Americans. Her father, Allen Downs, was a Scottish-American artist and filmmaker and a professor at the University of Minnesota. He met Downs’ mother, Anita Sánchez, a Mixtec Indian from Tlaxiaco in Oaxaca state, when he walked into a Mexico City club where she was singing. Lila (pronounced Lee-la) was born in Oaxaca in 1968. Allen Downs — who was 20 years older than Anita — died when Lila was 16. Lila grew up splitting her time between Oaxaca and Minneapolis, lived for a time in California and graduated from the university where her father had taught. Youthful identity crises led her down several lifestyle cul-de-sacs, including a well-publicized period as a camp follower of the Grateful Dead, before she found her true compass in embracing, exploring and celebrating Mexican music and folk culture in all its aspects.
Her many fans respect Downs, who plays April 9 at the Long Center for the Performing Arts, as a serious voice of this culture, winner of this year’s Grammy for Best Regional Mexican Album for her latest CD, “Pecados y Milagros (Sins and Miracles)” and a star of the world-music circuit. In conversation, though, she’s anything but humorless. Over the phone from Oaxaca she chats cheerfully in American-accented English, breaking into frequent laughter, about her tours, songwriting and home renovation plans.
Over her 20-year career, Downs has charted the length and breadth of traditional Mexican music, including songs from the Mixtec, Zapotec and other native cultures. An intimate ranchera, a ballad of an injured soul expressing her pain, might be followed by a kick-up-your-heels cumbia or banda number. In concert she’s been known to encore with an exquisite cover of “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” as a nod to an earlier life filled with nights singing American jazz standards.
Downs’ voice soars effortlessly between falsetto and heartbroken contralto as she slips personae on and off with a born actress’s ease. On “Pecados y Milagros” traditional rancheras such as Juan Záizar’s “La Cruz de Olvido” sit comfortably next to capable originals like the brassy “Mezcalito,” composed by Downs and her husband and longtime musical partner, Paul Cohen. It sounds simultaneously old-school and up-to-the-minute, with an indefinable but distinct playfulness behind it all.
“Many of the songs that I chose (for the CD) are old songs that I kind of was avoiding all my life, but at this point I really needed to do them, and I felt like I needed to cry with them,” she says. “I realize now, after we’ve been performing these songs for about a year and a month, that I’m actually singing these songs to my country, to Mexico. And I didn’t realize that when I chose them.”
And if Downs’ music descends from her mom’s love of rancheras, she admits that her videos — all saturated colors and exotic images — might owe a bit to her dad’s visual sense.
“I would imagine that that’s something that I developed thanks to him,” she says. “He was very interested in the beautiful side of art that permits for freedom, where there’s no classification of any kind. And I really respect that, and I’ve tried to be true to that as an artist. On the other hand I am also part Indian, so at one point it was a conflict for me. But now I feel like they both enrich each other and the aspects of being a visual artist, that can be kind of cold at times, are complemented, for me, by my Indian ancestry, which (has qualities of being) incredibly kind and tender and always giving.”
It’s hard to separate Downs’ music from her equally compelling biography, and the singer herself doesn’t object. “For me, in order to talk about music, it’s important to talk about my cultural background,” she says. “But I love it when you can just go with the music. Music is the most amazing thing, and in the end it doesn’t matter how you concoct whatever it is that you do. The importance is what you achieve through those messages, or through the beauty of music.”
When asked, she responds with an enthusiastic yes that she’d love to record an album of standards from the Great American Songbook. “We’re always involved in these other projects. But it’s one of my passions, I always practice with my standards.
“I began singing jazz, really, as a performer, and then performing some Mexican songs and then some cumbias — it was pretty eclectic here in Oaxaca,” she says. “We would work here for the tourist season, which is basically all year round. And that’s how we survived on, what was it, like 200 pesos a night, and it was great. Then we decided to go to Mexico City, because we had some friends there, and then started working at a club. And then things just kind of spun out of control!”
Do some of her compatriots still gripe that she’s not 100 percent Mexican, whatever that might mean? “Oh, yeah, of course,” she says. “I think mainly it’s been an issue for the Mexican nationals, that either I’m not Indian enough — and also possibly in the Mexican-American community, (that) I’m not American enough. Those are issues that people who are of mixed race and mixed culture, I guess it’s part of who we become, you know.”
Do audiences in Mexico view her presentation of their national music as exotic? “I grew up in a place, Oaxaca, that’s very unusual in terms of its ethnicities and also the way we express our pride and in general, a celebration about roots,” she says. “But I think things have changed since quite an important political and cultural movement happened in 1994 that created an awareness in Mexico, at a national level, towards indigenous roots. I kind of came around at the time that it created a scene, musically speaking, and a reception for it. I think that also happened in Europe and the U.S. — maybe less so in the U.S. The U.S. is a little bit oblivious of what happens elsewhere.
“Our audiences are very special people who do pay attention, and who are reading the papers and are interested in knowing more about other cultures,” she adds. “We’ve been very fortunate in that respect. But yes, definitely every country has its own difference in their approach, and what they think Mexico is. Some of them have beautiful ideas of who we are, and crazy ones, too. So it’s about learning who they think we are, and then kind of working with that as well, and I find that fascinating.”
Downs is well aware of Mexico’s image — not without justification — as a place where beauty exists closely alongside poverty and danger. “It’s a little scary here and there, you know. But at the same time you know what the reasons are for all of this, and you kind of understand where it’s coming from. So, yeah, you’ve just got to be strong, and as a musician you feel like it’s your duty, somehow, to go and perform for these places, especially those that are more affected by the violence, because they are the people who really do need a few songs and a couple of tequilas to forget their woes.”
A hard-working street vendor in Huatulco. 
A sunny day, warm sand and no particular place to go; a piece of heaven in Huatulco
Colorful buildings in Huatulco, Mexico.
Souvenirs for sale in Huatulco, Mexico.
