Desde La Bahia - TT: From the Bay Area

Latin Beat Magazine, Oct, 2000 by Jesse "Chuy" Varela

LILA DOWNS: With rave reviews in the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, the crowd was buzzing on Thursday, June 29 at La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley in anticipation of Mexican singer-songwriter Lila Downs. The talk was about music and surprisingly not about the upcoming presidential elections south-of-the-border. After experiencing her performance you realize that, in a nation where elections are still for sale, Lila (Lee-La) does more to advance the cause of the marginalized than any other politician.

An electrifying figure who bears an uncanny resemblance to painter Frida Kahlo, she wore a hand-embroidered cotton blouse with bare midriff and a long green skirt and a silk-like black shawl draped over her shoulders, as her braided charcoal hair glistened against the spotlights. You quickly sense her quiet confidence and rare artistic ability; a diva's aura.

A talented quartet from Mexico City made up of Paul Cohen (sax-piano), Celso Duarte (harp-fiddle-guitar), Armando Montiel (conga-cajón) and Chuco Mendoza (bass) provided superb backup in the intimate stage setting. Cohen, who is married to Downs, serves as the group's musical director and is an able multi-instrumentalist with diverse improvisational ability.

The strums of a folk harp served as the opening prelude for a rendition of Sandunga, a traditional Zapotec song from Oaxaca that is the painful cry of an Indian woman embracing her dead mother's body. Her first few notes said it all -- a huge and potent range with exquisite vocal technique and articulation laced with operatic and jazz influences. Embracing the melancholy lament, she turned out an emotional rendering that conjured images of the soulful 1950s singer Chavela Vargas.

With quiet demeanor, she greeted the audience and scanned the room with those intense Frida-like eyes. Grabbing a cone-shaped guiro (gourd scraper) she swung into Noche De Luna, a mid-tempo Cuban guajira done ala Mexicana. With a Sonora Santanera swing and a torchy 1940s cabaret delivery, the neo-traditionalist was the reincarnation of a long forgotten guarachera from a bygone era. Forging a bridge between the past and the present, Downs is a passionate revivalist transcending musical eras.

"Se me paró el corazon con las trajedias del amor," (My heart stopped with the tragedy of love)... She sang these words with a seasoned nuance that was greeted by a roar of applause. Nueve Viento came next and added a festive spin with a delightful 6/8 huapango beat and contrast as she stopped mid-tune to recite stanzas of dichos (folk sayings). With a quivering vibrato, it bore the touch of pioneer ranchera singer Lucha Reyes with its chorus --"coco de la nube, coco de la lluvia..."-- and its climactic crescendo.

Catching her wind, she took a minute to expound on her next piece, an original called Maquilladora, a song dedicated to women who work in Free Trade border factories. The delicate cumbia featured a melancholy fiddle that contrasted nicely to the clarity and radiance of her voice that spoke to the women abused, killed and exploited in these industrial zones.