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Lila Downs: Singer Lila Downs
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Lila Downs is a bicultural singer-songwriter raised both in Oaxaca, Mexico, and Minnesota. An international vocal phenomenon and cult figure, she is often referred to as the Musical Frida Kahlo for her contributions to the Oscar-winning soundtrack for the movie Frida. Lila and her band combine regional Mexican rhythms with jazz, rock and pop sounds. Her show is a stunning multimedia attraction that blends exuberant music and song with screen projections of Mexican life.
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Lila Downs (born 1968 in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca) is a Mexican singer. She performs her own compositions as well as tapping into native Mesoamerican music of the Mixtec, Zapotec, Maya and Nahuatl cultures.
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Latin Grammy award winner Lila Downs has in recent years become one of the most highly acclaimed world music singers. Her intense and charismatic performance has captivated audiences around the globe, moving them with the bittersweet stories of her Mexican ancestors and homeland she depicts in her songs. The irresistible rhythms bring people to their feet, filling even the most traditional theatre venues with life and dance.
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Singer-songwriter Lila Downs (Mixtec) [W]on the Latin Grammy for Best Folk Album in 2005, for her album Una Sangre/One Blood. She tours worldwide, and she incorporates indigenous languages and popular singing traditions of Mexico into her original compositions, which are co-written with her husband, saxophonist Paul Cohen, and other members of their band. Downs includes video projections in her performances, and has collaborated with videomakers including Elena Pardo and Johnny Moreno to create music videos and the performance video Loteria Cantada. In 2002, Lila Downs recorded several songs on Eliot Goldenthal's soundtrack for Julie Taymor's film Frida, about the life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. The song Burn It Blue from the Frida soundtrack was nominated for the Best Song Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and Downs performed the song with Caetano Veloso at the 2003 Academy Awards. She formerly sang with La Trova Serrana, a folklorico group from Guelatao, Oaxaca.
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Singer Lila Downs grew up with the culture 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 has created a very individual strain of song that has indigenous Mexican roots and North American sonorities. Born in 1968, she spent her early years in Mexico, but after her parents split up, she was shuffled off to live with a relative in California. She grew to love music, specifically classical and opera, and began studying those in college. After two years... she experienced a crisis, questioning why she was singing and dropping out to become a Deadhead, following the Grateful Dead around the country in a VW bus and earning money by making and selling jewelry, and not singing at all.
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The stylistic and linguistic diversity of Lila Downs’ songs is echoed by her many-facetted three-octave mezzo-soprano, which displays the different sides of her musical socialization. "Picture Edith Piaf singing in Spanish, and you’ll have an idea of Lila Downs" soulful sound." the Los Angeles Times wrote in 1998. Over and over again, critics avoid musical classifications by comparing her with character singers such as Billie Holiday, Chavela Vargas and Lucha Reyes. But Lila Downs ... commands the light and humorous end of the spectrum – her excursions into punk even call to mind Nina Hagen.
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Singer Lila Downs