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Downs Mexico Way Lila Downs recently made her best ever album, in
spite of difficult circumstances. Chris Nickson got on the ’phone before her UK gig in June.
L
ila Downs is a paradox. A huge star who still somehow operates under the radar more than fif- teen years after breaking onto the international stage. A major- label artist who gleefully continues to take chances and refuses to compromise her work to make it more commercially accept- able. A woman learning to say goodbye who finds redemption in her art. A leading light of Mexican music who had a former life as a Deadhead.
She’s the woman with a Mexican Mixte- ca mother and America father, who grew up in Oaxaca, in the south of the country and then in the US. She took a while to find her- self. But since her first proper CD, at the end of the last millennium, Downs has grown in confidence and delved deeper into her roots South of the border. What she’s achieved is evident on her tenth album, the explosive, no-holds barred Balas Y Choco- late (Bullets And Chocolate).
It’s a disc that comes after a terminal diagnosis for her husband and musical part- ner, Paul Cohen, although the process seems to be in remission, at least for the moment.
“When we have to deal with death it’s food for inspiration,” Downs says, “and all we can do is hope it works out in a thera- peutic manner.”
This time out she took a different approach to writing and arranging. Previ- ously, she and Cohen had been almost auto- cratic, needing to be in charge of every- thing. For this disc she loosened up and “it became a fun album. The band would get together at our house to record ideas. I had to ask myself if I was going to regret not being in control and savouring the issues. But it came together so well.”
It juxtaposes today’s Mexico with its his- tory and pride, and it’s as political a record as you’re going to hear, following in the footsteps of so many Latin musicians who created the nueva canción of the 1960s and ’70s. The single, La Patria Madrina, a duet with pop-rock star Juanes, came out six months after the disappearance of 43 stu- dents in Mexico, an event that galvanised public opinion.
“There was a sense of urgency about the song and getting it out there. I was sur- prised the video was censored by TV sta- tions because they considered it too graph- ic. But I had to say something about it all, and now people thank me for making that statement. We all have to make change happen; no one else will.”
She’s doing her part to help. In the title of the album, Downs has captured the two contrasting icons of Mexico today. The bul- lets of the drug trade that’s still tearing the country apart, and the tradition of choco- late as a gift.
“I didn’t think about a concept with the record, but I did think it would be danger- ous; ‘bullets’ is an extreme notion. We’re at war here, in a sense, and for us as musicians trying to speak it can be tough. We’ve had to avoid certain states in Mexico because of the danger. We’ve had an invitation from Guerrero. We’ve refused to go before, but this time we’re thinking of accepting. We live in Oaxaca, in the south of the country, and that’s pretty safe. The contrast can be surreal. In some places you have to be so careful, but there are also places where people are loving and caring. The offering of chocolate is an example. My mother feels that if you haven’t given someone choco- late, they haven’t visited.”
Downs also pleased her mother on this album by including a duet with Juan Gabriel, the biggest name in Mexican music. But making that happen wasn’t an easy process.
“I wrote a long, tender letter to him,” she recalls. “He answered. We sent many let- ters, he’s an amazing artist, and this (La Farsante) is one of his difficult songs. I’d sug- gested another song of his but he’d just re- recorded it with a young duo. Juan lives in Cancún and works with an engineer who comes up to his house. So we sent him the tapes, he recorded his part and sent it back.”
E
mailing sound files is a normal, 21st Century way of working, and Downs has always embraced the new along with the old. Her life has been a complete mixture of the unlikely and the unusual. She spent the first few years of her life in Oaxaca, then, once her parents divorced, she grew up in California, and after showing promise as a singer, began studying classical music and opera. But she rebelled against that, dyed her hair blonde and became a Dead- head, trailing the Grateful Dead around the US and supporting herself by making jewellery for a couple of years. “I guess you never really stop being a Deadhead,” she muses with a laugh.
Then it was back to college, graduating in anthropology and voice, before returning to Oaxaca and her mother, earning money by working in a shop and singing rancheras in a bar. She was happy, even if she was going nowhere. Life changed when she met
saxophonist Paul Cohen. He introduced her to jazz and that helped open her up, to see music in an entirely different way.
“Jazz taught me that you need to use every sound, every way of expressing music, any of the possible forms. It’s exciting to do that, to go between styles and it removes repetition.”
She’s been careful to avoid that repeti- tion, not just from album to album, but track to track. On Balas Y Chocolate the sound moves effortlessly from norteño to mariachi, ranchera to hip-hop, bolero to electronic music, with Downs’ magnificent voice the commanding presence that ties it all togeth- er. But this is nothing new; she began inves- tigating hip-hop back in 2001 with Border, and would like to delve deeper into it.
She’s won Grammys and Latin Gram-
mys. She’s performed at the Academy Awards. She’s kind of a big deal, really. Cer- tainly enough to take all kinds of chances, like Raiz, a 2014 disc she made with the Argentinian singer Niña Pastori and Soledad Pastorutti, a flamenco singer from Spain.
“I jump at opportunities,” Downs says. “This was a way to learn for us all. It’s inter- esting to push yourself. And it was good to work with other women; it takes us longer to lower our guard. After that we had great fun, we became like sisters.” And along the way, the record earned Latin Grammy nomi- nations for Best Folk Album and Album of the Year. A golden experiment.
Inevitably, the diagnosis her husband received almost three years ago – the cou- ple haven’t been more specific about the ill- ness – has coloured everything. They still tour and record together, but Day of the Dead imagery crops up frequently through- out Balas Y Chocolate, and there’s a sense of growing shadows across the work, even in the joy of performance. Song titles like Viene La Muerte Echando Rasero (Death Comes Standard Casting) or Dulce Veneno (Sweet Poison) offer an indication, too. Many of the songs are also strong political statements. The title track is about those children who cross the border, looking for a life in the United States. Many, of course, don’t make it. And then there’s the corrup- tion that seems endemic throughout Mexi- co, the drug wars and the lords who are lauded in the pervasive narcocorridos (essentially folk songs praising the violence, killing, and exploits of the kingpins in the trade – perversions of the Robin Hood bal- lads, if you like). There are plenty of targets for anger and outrage – and for hope.
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