"Exotic, beautiful and with a powerful voice...she is the reflection of the world culture of the 21st century...“
Los Angeles Times
Lila Downs takes an uncompromising stance on music, and her repertoire is a ingenious mix of jazz, African percussion and Indian rhythms. When she performs her songs, she is enraptured yet earthbound, ethnic Mexican yet universal. She sings with her whole body, modulating the sounds with her hands, sometimes so completely absorbed that she sobs the words, or sings in a strange child-like voice. The daughter of an indigena and an American, she sings in English, Spanish and the Mixtec, Zapotec, Maya and Náhuatl languages. A child from two worlds, she learnt weaving in Oaxaca and studied opera singing and anthropology in Minnesota. She works with musicians from Mexico, USA, Canada, Cuba, Peru, Argentina, and Paraguay, sings her own compositions and is committed to exploring the inexhaustible repertoire of folk music. Her lyrics can be provocative and decidedly political. The intensity of her singing and her outspoken lyrics have given her superstar status in Mexico. Her current CD La Linea / Border is dedicated to Mexican migrants and, above all, the illegal migrants who died trying to cross the border between Mexico and the USA.After the "Concert of the Divas", the Berlin-based Mexican soprano Erika Rojo is performing with a piano accompaniment in the café, which has been transformed into a "Mexican salon". Erika Rojo's skill as a lyrical soprano led to ecstatic reviews in the Berlin Tagesspiegel: "The audience hung on her lips, and was entirely captivated…“
|
