As a return to her beginnings, Lila Downs describes her most recent songs; she asserts that on this occasion, releasing unreleased music, she had the opportunity to travel back to the rhythms that propelled her career.
She recently released “Changes My World” with a special collaboration from rapper Snow Tha Product and “Tumba 7”, both in a cumbia rhythm very much in the singer’s style and with lyrics drawn from her inspiration.
The track “Changes My World” reflects the resilience and strength of young women who, through study and daily struggle, transform their surroundings, a theme important to her interpretation.
“It was very beautiful that Snow Tha Product agreed to do this collaboration. She is inspired by the students I support through a scholarship, where every year I give a benefit concert here in my homeland, Oaxaca. It is inspiring to see the young women in their transformation through education; they arrive quietly and curious about what will happen and six months later you see them with an extraordinary vocabulary and their thoughts changed. That is what the song is about,” she shared.
What motivates Lila to seek collaborations for a better future for the young women of Oaxaca, her place of origin, is the lack of opportunities she herself faced.
“It makes me think back to my adolescence and how difficult it was for me to face a society in which I felt I wasn’t very supported as a woman; on the contrary, I was attacked. For me it is important to lend a hand to these young women. And thinking about that, to craft lines that accompany other women in their sound around the world.”
On the other hand, the song “Tumba 7” says that it emerged from a music workshop she held in Oaxaca and, between mezcal and tlayudas, this song was created, dedicated to a place very special in her adolescence from where she would spend the night looking at the moon.
“It’s about Monte Albán, a sacred site of Mesoamerica here in Oaxaca, to put it on the map. If one thinks of Egypt, Barcelona or the Middle East, one recalls important places, ancient sites of humanity. That is why it’s important to remember that we must safeguard it. If we allow these places to be destroyed, it’s like taking away our heritage and erasing our paths.”
In our conversation with the singer who has won the Grammy and several Latin Grammys, we talked about a unique opportunity in her career that occurred 23 years ago. It was her involvement in the Academy Awards where she sang the song “Burn It Blue” from the film “Frida.” Since then, Lila has greatly influenced the music industry, but how did this opportunity influence her?
“It was a great gift to be able to be there at that moment, to represent in a certain way my country, my Oaxaca, my ethnicity as well. I could say certain things at that moment, but I couldn’t do so as I can now. That’s why I am very grateful that we have reached another moment in which we can speak more about the great diversity that we are as Mexicans and Latin Americans. I am very grateful that life allowed me to see these changes and few artists can say they have lived them.”
Recently she had a performance in the HBO series, “Como agua para chocolate” (Like Water for Chocolate), where she sang the piece “El relámpago” in one of the episodes of this second season.
“That was a cherry on the cake to be invited. I don’t know if you know, but some time ago, Laura Esquivel and a producer invited me to create the music for a Broadway musical and in the end it didn’t happen. I have lived a lot with this novel ‘Like Water for Chocolate’ and I am very grateful to reinsert myself in that wonderful story that tells about the reality of Latinos and Mexicans. I think we all have a reference to ‘Mamà Elena’ and ‘Tita’ and the other characters there, and it is an important reference of who we are,” she concluded.
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