Lila Downs

There's far more to Mexico than the polluted metropolis of Mexico City or the vacation spots like Acapulco. It's a country with a long history, as Mexican American singer Lila Downs knows, and which she explores on her fourth album, Tree of Life (Narada).

"In Mexico we have 64 different Indian languages that are quite alive," she explained. On her mother's side, Downs's is Mixtec Indian, from the southern Oaxaca region. Several tracks on her new disc, such as "Xquenda" reach back to that heritage, to "stories that go back to before the Spanish came, and talk about our history and pre-Hispanic past. What interested me was the mythology account of the Mixtec people. I grew up with many of these stories my grandmother told me, like the man being born from a tree."

"I feel like a conduit of a musical message. The song takes me over."

For Downs, 32, it's been a long journey to come to terms with who she is. Her younger years were spent between Mexico and the U.S., which meant that "every time that I changed, I had to be a chameleon and become someone different."

Singing, however, was something she'd always done, and eventually she attended college to study opera and music. After two years, however, Downs dropped out, thinking "singing was superficial," and became a Deadhead, one of the followers of the Grateful Dead.

"I didn't have any money, I made jewelry." she recalled. "I didn't get close to the music, but it was easy to be part of, and it was very positive."

After two years of the hippie life, she returned to school, eventually graduating with degrees in voice and anthropology before returning to Oaxaca and taking life more seriously. She began singing in earnest, discovering that she was "an intense singer, and I respect being a singer. I feel like a conduit of a musical message. The song takes me over."

Exploring her background led Downs, who bears a resemblance to iconic Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, to face who she was.

"I think I discovered I was more Mixteco than I thought, and also more Western-influenced," she observed. "But I've come to terms with the fact that's my father's blood and heritage is part of me." Downs "got a grant to do most of Tree of Life, $250 a month, which went a long way in Oaxaca."

She deliberately kept away from the jazz stylings that had permeated her last release, 1999's La Sandugna, in order "to be more respectful to the Mezo-American folk tradition, which includes the guitar."

The result is a stripped-down record, strongly driven by Downs's voice, as on the atmospheric "Arbol De La Vida," ("Tree Of Life"). Already she's begun a new project, one which ties together both parts of her blood, a collection of songs about migration and the border. "For a long time I didn't feel comfortable with who I was," Downs said. "But finally I'm happy with myself, and all the parts of myself. And I have the ability to express that in my singing."

Lila Downs

"I feel like a conduit of a musical message. The song takes me over."

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