Lila Downs Blends Tradition with Activism in Music Marc Vitali - Chicago Tonight
go to original July 9, 2016

Lila Downs is a Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter with roots in both Minnesota and Oaxaca, Mexico.

Downs studied classical voice and cultural anthropology in college and marries the two interests in her culturally inspired musical pursuits. Her music is a fusion of genres - jazz, blues, soul, cumbia, rock and even rap - and incorporates traditional Mexican and native Mesoamerican music. She has collaborated with Carlos Santana, the Colombian singer Juanes, and jazz artist Wynton Marsalis, among others.

Even though she’s incorporated it in to her career, there was a time in her life that Downs resisted embracing her heritage.

“I think I had a moment of catharsis. I think that I dropped out - I was in college and I followed around the Grateful Dead, and I did some things that probably my mother isn’ t very proud of,” Downs said. “She called me one time and she was like ‘I no longer have a daughter,’ and she hung up on me.

“She was pretty upset, and that was really kind of the finding myself story. And after that I came back to college, I finished studying anthropology and weaving. Actually, textiles brought me back to music.”

In the video below, Downs performs “La Cruz de Olvido” by Juan Saiza



Downs sings in Spanish, English and the languages of the Mixtec, Zapotec, Maya and Nahuatl cultures. Throughout her career, Downs has been a social activist and her compositions often touch on socially significant issues pertaining to the indigenous people of Oaxaca.

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