Snakes, cockroaches and one blood
Multi-faceted 'Frida' singer Lila Downs makes her Alaska debut
It's been a year of contrast for world music mezzo-soprano Lila (pronounced Leela) Downs, a product of contrast herself.
In March, she became the first Latin woman to perform an Oscar-nominated song at the Academy Awards when she sang "Burn It Blue" from the soundtrack to "Frida" with Brazilian legend Cateano Veloso.
Based on the life of artist Frida Kahlo, the movie was also Downs' acting debut. Playing a singer who corresponds with Kahlo, she sang four songs from Elliot Goldenthal's soundtrack. The film won two Oscars, including one for score.
Since then, Downs has been touring - the United States, Brazil, Panama and Mexico - and trying to get comfortable with the songs on "Un Sangre" or "One Blood," her upcoming fourth album.
A singer of rock, rancheros, folk, jazz, torch, cumbia, opera and the indigenous music of Afro-Indian Mexico, Downs is making her first trip to Alaska. After three shows in Anchorage, she sings at 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 11, at the Juneau-Douglas High School auditorium, then departs for Kodiak. Tickets are $22 for the general audience and $18 for students and seniors, and are available at Hearthside Books and Rainy Day Books.
"After we were on the Oscars, people have been really excited," said Downs, by phone from New York City, her home for the last few months. She moved from Mexico City after living there for five years.
"Finding yourself in place like Alaska that's so intense and beautiful is something that I look forward to," she said.
Downs is the daughter of a native Mixtec singer from Oaxaca, Mexico, and a Scottish-American film and art professor from Minnesota. She grew up listening to Oaxacan songs, Woody Guthrie and John Coltrane. She studied opera at the University of the Arts in Oaxaca and majored in music and anthropology at the University of Minnesota, after taking a little time off to follow the Grateful Dead.
Downs' first album, the 1998 "La Sandunga," collected Oaxacan folk songs. The second, "Yutu Tata-Tree of Life" in 2000, was a concept album based on mythological stories, seen on pictographs, of the Mixtec forefathers being born from trees.
"Border (La Linea)," her third album, came out in July 2001. It added traces of Mexican and American folk, including a medley of Woody Guthrie's "Pastures of Plenty" and "This Land is Your Land."
"Un Sangre" riffs off the idea of all people, from "China to Puerto Rico," following the same design and being a slave to their desires. Downs has spent the last year getting comfortable with the songs and believes it may be the most "mature" of her releases.
"Somehow it seems easier to say things in metaphors than it used to be," Downs said. "I don't have to be so literal. Sometimes you say things that don't need to be said."
The album will include an interpretation of "La Bamba" and a traditional version of the children's song "La Cucaracha," which gained popularity during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). The story describes a cockroach who can't walk because it doesn't have any marijuana to smoke: "La cucaracha, la cucaracha/Ya no puede caminar/Porque no tiene, porque le falta/Marijuana que fumar."
"To me, it means we're so ambitious, we wish to have so many things, and in that case, it would be the marijuana," Downs said. "But we can't dance anymore because we're depleting our resources. We're at war with other people."
Many of Downs' new songs are inspired by the Afro-Indian symbols of the communities where she grew up. Downs added new lyrics to "Little Snake," a traditional tune from the 1700s: "Little snake/Little snake/Please don't bite me/Please don't touch my tail/Because every time I crawl along/I crawl by myself."
"It's about masturbation, and it's a silly verse, but it's very typical in the Afro-Indian communities of Mexico," Downs said. "In Mexico and Latin America, generally the songs have a lot to do with sex.
"These songs are well known, universally and in Latin America, and they're very beautiful traditional songs," she said. "Sometimes people don't know about the history of these songs, and that's what I wish to tell them.
"Sometimes we have old songs that we make fun of, and we need to take them seriously again. That's what I love, to take songs that are very meaningful, that strike a chord deep inside you, and make powerful things."
Downs will sing "La Cucaracha" and Little Snake" at the JDHS auditorium, as well as songs from her previous three albums. She's touring with six musicians: a folklorist harpist/violinist/guitarist, a lute player, a percussionist and cajon player, an acoustic bass player, a saxophonist/clarinetist/pianist and a new Brazilian guitarist, Guilherme Monteiro.
"Many Brazilian musicians have a strong background in jazz and have an intense relationship with the music of their country, which is quite sophisticated," Downs said. "He knows all these Latin forms and we're constantly learning from him and really incorporating him in an amazing way harmonically."
"We've been working on these new songs for a year, and we've been able to explore the possibilities," she said. "Sometimes it depends on the arrangement and what happens musically and that's one of those amazing, magical things about art. There's different renditions every time."