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Lila Downs: Songs
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Born in Oaxaca to a Mixtec Indian mother and Scottish-American father, LILA DOWNS was long at odds with her blended heritage, bouncing between the U.S. and Mexico, opera, anthropology and the Grateful Dead. She was apprenticing as a weaver in Oaxaca when she heard the regional music as if for the first time. Smitten, she began singing in local clubs using her supple, multioctave voice to tell vivid stories in song. Her musicianship deepened as her personal and political awareness rose; she sings, she says, “for those who cannot.”
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The haunting story, lush photography and perfect soundtrack to the motion picture Frida should have gone far to introduce Mexican diva Lila Downs to English-speaking audiences. She twice performs on screen, once in the bar scene, once besides the heroine who, in her four-posted bed towards the end of her life and ... the movie, has been transported into the art gallery hosting her first-ever formal exhibition on Mexican soil. Lila Downs also performs the celebratory closing credit song "Burning Bed" with Brazilian super star Caetano Veloso.
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Paul: Lila ... sings this song, we’ll be singing it in this "Frida" movie that we’re doing for Miramax next year, with a director from New York, her name is Julia Taymor; she’s worked with "The Lion King" on Broadway. Very interesting. It’s with commercial people like Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas.
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Lila and the band’s most recent performances have included heavy touring in Mexico, South America, the U.S. and Europe. Lila presently lives in Coyoacan and collaborates with musicians from Mexico, Canada, Cuba, Peru, Argentina and Paraguay. She performs her own compositions and ... taps into the vast reservior of native mesoamerican music, by singing songs in the the Indian languages of Mexico such as Mixtec, Zapotec, Maya and Nahuatl.
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