Lila Downs (born 1968 in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, Mexico) is a Mexican singer. She performs her own compositions as well as tapping into native Mesoamerican music of the Mixtec, Zapotec, Maya and Nahuatl cultures.
Downs, is the daughter of Mixtec cabaret singer Anita Sanchez and Allen Downs, a Scottish/English-American professor of art and cinematographer from Minnesota. She grew up partly in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, partly in the U.S. states in California as a teen, and Minnesota as an adult where she graduated from the University of Minnesota in voice and anthropology .
She later returned to Mexico where she learned to weave. Later, she began singing in the club scenes of Oaxaca and Philadelphia along with Paul Cohen, an American-born saxophonist. They began collaborating together on songs that would slowly evolve into Downs's subsequent recordings. Cohen went on to become both Downs's husband and her artistic director.
In recent years, Downs and her band have toured widely in Mexico, South America, the US and Europe. She was also heard in the soundtrack to the movie Frida in a song, Burn it Blue, that was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song and that she performed at the 75th Academy Awards. Other songs that she performed on the soundtrack are "Benediction and Dream," "Estrella Oscura," and "La Llorona." Other movies with a Lila Downs song are "Tortilla Soup" and "Real Women Have Curves". Downs is currently based in Coyoacán, a neighborhood of Mexico City.
