The music of Lila Downs (Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, 54 years old) is like a walk through the multicultural center of Mexico City. The career of what was branded by the media as La heredera de Chavela Vargas has been marked by her approach to different musical genres, but always maintaining a strong Mexican essence. Now, dressed in a northern hat, she begins La Sánchez, a project in which she focuses fully on the Mexican regional. "[Why I play multiple genres] has been my life's whole question. I have been a restless child. I didn't like to be told that I looked prettier quietly. I had played norteño before, but on albums with different genres," Downs told this newspaper at Sony's offices.
He wears long braids that touch the ground and have accompanied him during his long musical career of more than 30 years. She wears a suit with Oaxacan embroidery and a black hat, a complement that gives more strength to the dynamics of her project. With La Sánchez he takes a step forward on his path marked by indigenous roots. "It's like going out, going for a spin musically and in life. Back to the mother's name, to the matriarchy." Downs has written to different aspects of life since its inception, such as heartbreak, the social demands of minorities or empowerment (even singing in some of the indigenous languages of Mexico). In the office room there are several decorative cacti, which simulate the Sonoran desert, in which he recorded his latest music video, Vas de Salida. In the song, the first step of La Sánchez, the singer plays heartbreak and spite, with a sound marked by wind instruments, characteristic of the northern band.
Lila Downs at Sony Music.Aggi Garduño
"[The emergence of the project] is the experience from the woman who is left alone. And I have repeated that story several times. My grandmother was left alone, my mother too, when my father died and I was 16. And now my husband died in December, and I'm left alone, so... It's La Sánchez," she explains in a voice that is gradually breaking down. She is halfway through her Two Hearts tour, which will take her to eight countries until November 1. The singer claims her mother's surname in a panorama marked by the success of regional music, which triumphs in the world: "What I am doing coincided with the social movement regarding northern Mexican music. I was already preparing the record, regardless of Featherweight, who didn't even know who he was."
Concerts, a Maori tattoo and a varied audience
The singer put the name Dos Corazones to the tour for a reason. "Sometimes you name the tour with things that have nothing to do with the record, to your liking. We named the tour Two Hearts because my son heard me sing this song. I think he was punctual, thinking about his father and me," he says. Her husband and artistic partner, the American Paul Cohen, died last December at the age of 63, after a long illness that accompanied him for 10 years. Downs has made a regular appearance at the National Auditorium every November, a date symbolic of the Day of the Dead. "We had to walk a long time with death, and it was already a very daily issue in the family. My kids had to live with that too. That makes you not afraid of it in a certain way, that you see it as a natural thing that will come [...] The moment we made it a tribute [to the concert in the Auditorium], as an offering of music, it changed and we started to fill the venue."
The singer has become accustomed to traveling to other countries to perform. Wearing a Maori tattoo that was done during a trip to New Zealand, the ink shows that Downs has traveled around the world. He says that the tastes of his audience change depending on the place, the moment and the country in which he acts. "I was in Argentina and they wanted to hear the songs that talk about the dignity and independence of women. I wrote a song called Digna [Ochoa, the human rights lawyer] that talks about women who have been violated. She was disappeared, she was killed. They asked me for topics that had to do with that and I also sensed that it was necessary. The concerts give you the guideline on what the public likes the most. The ones I do lately are loved by the gentlemen. It is very varied, because I go out with my scarf singing El son del chile. And the gentlemen smile, because it gives them a lot of joy or they think it's funny. I don't know, but I love to provoke happiness in people. Sometimes it is also necessary to do sad and melancholic things. When I go to a concert, I want to cry for a while or I want to be happy...", she says.
Lila Downs on May 26, 2023.Aggi Garduño
Lila Downs has embraced the country's original cultures since its inception. Daughter of an American father and an indigenous mother, she had to live racism and classism in her own skin. The experience was a turning point. "When I was a teenager I wanted to be whiter. I noticed that the world treated me very well when I was with the white man in my family and they blocked me badly when I walked with my mother, who is indigenous. That is starting to be a reason why I write songs that have to do with migration, with the border, with discrimination. And also the stories of women who, despite encountering all these challenges, get up, keep walking, keep dancing and singing."
He did not leave aside his Mexican roots. "I have had to speak [the different languages] a little in my concerts, and show the permanence of our indigenous heritage and the strength that lives. If you go out into these rural communities you will realize that all this is alive. It is not something that stayed in the ruins of the Temple of the Sun or there in my land, Monte Albán or Mitla. It is alive, Zapotec is spoken, Cuitlateco is spoken, Mixtec... It's beautiful to be able to show the world that it's alive and it's not a myth." With La Sánchez, Lila Downs now returns to claim her mother's surname, and makes use of the musical rhythms of the north to give a boost to the name of Mexico.
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