Monterey World Music Festival- Sept. 29, 30 & Oct. 1 2000

Lila Downs
(Pre-Columbian Mexico)

"Yunu yucu ninu" (3:31)
Tree of Life
mp3 format- 3.21 mb

   Born to a Mexican Indian woman and a Minnesota arts professor and raised on both sides of the border, Downs dedicated 7 years of her life to opera and four to jazz, this, after getting her start at the age of eleven singing with mariachis.

    It's not so much that she knows how to sing a ranchera as well as a blues standard, but that she knows how to interpret. She understands the emotional import and the subtext of what she is singing, and delivers the goods with a distinctive, powerful middle range that is all her own.

    Lila Downs original music uses images from ancient pre-Columbian manuscripts and, in addition to English and Spanish, lyrics are sung in the ancient languages of her land: Mixtec, Zapotec, or Nahuatl. A unique mix of percussion and instruments such as the saxophone (played by world-inhabitant Pablo Cohen provides the textural weave in which Downs winds her voice.

" Suddenly she became La Llorona- a mythical woman said to haunt the rivers of Mexico, weeping and moaning for her children whom she drowned in a fit of madness. The hushed audience watched her, transfixed, as she knelt, calling out in agony and adoration to the ghost of La Llorona.

"If Down's performances are marked by anything, it is an uncanny ability to become the character of a song. Whether La Llorona, or a sensual jazz singer, Downs discovers a part of herself in the essence in each song. She is a reflection of a twenty first century world culture where ethnicity and national boundaries are blurred.

"She is best known in Los Angeles for her electrifying performance at the World Festival of Sacred Music. Downs received a standing ovation that night, an honor given to only one other festival participant - the Dalai Lama"

"Imagine Edith Piaf singing in Spanish and you have the idea of the soulful sound of Lila Downs"
- Los Angeles Times

Lyrics:
Three Flint Woman, who is born in the silence of the night
From the conch shell, she breathes the air from this red world
And though the truth is hidden behind the stories,
She can be see dancing with death before the steam bath
Stone woman, stone woman, my stone woman
By the river of the white palm and in the presence
Of the gods, stone woman comes down naked from the sky
Red and pearls are her dress , during the sun of movement,
She arrives
Stone woman, stone woman, my stone woman

A program of the
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