Songwriter Lila Downs on Life, Death, and Chocolate Tony Montague - Straight.com
go to original May 12, 2015

Possessed of one of the most extraordinary voices in world music, Lila Downs is as much of a performance artist as a singer. Her repertoire which can range from traditional to original generally references her native Mexican heritage. In this interview, she discusses her childhood in Mexico, growing up the daughter of a mixed marriage, and her eventual turn to topical songs inspired by the music of Mercedes Sosa. (Amnesty International USA)

Not many artists can claim to have a species of insect named after them.

Last year, Mexican-American songwriter, bandleader, and activist Lila Downs inspired a group of biologists working in the state of Oaxaca to call a newly discovered and vibrantly hued grasshopper Liladownsia fraile in her honor. It’s an odd but fitting tribute to one of the most colorful singers in North American music, classically trained, but with roots deep in the soil of southern Mexico.

Downs and her band - which includes her husband, Paul Cohen, on saxophones - mix Mexican songs with her own compositions, which blend folk, pop, jazz, reggae, and hip-hop with deceptive ease. Her themes are usually social and political, and she likes to link past and present in the lives of indigenous people and the poor. The title of Downs’s latest recording, Balas y Chocolate (Bullets and Chocolate) neatly encapsulates her perspective.

“It’s in the way that we celebrate life and death,” says Downs, reached on her cellphone on a train heading to San Diego. “In Mexico we make an altar on the Day of the Dead - the first day is dedicated to the children and the young men and women who ‘come back’, and will partake in the chocolate which is a very important feature on the altar, with oranges, bread, and maybe some mescal.

“I think the songs on the album take us through that experience. I try to express that relationship we have with the other world. And sometimes the lyrics are from the other world - the voices of those who cannot speak. I’m not quite sure how this is going to play out, but I’m starting to discover it as I perform the songs on-stage.”

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