14 March 2005 - It has been several months since I noticed an error on Down's web page and tried to find an email address to tell them about the error. I couldn't find a url for contacts about the web page. I think programmers in general go through several levels of development. The problem is at the middle level. They think they are really good but don't know enough to know the difference. Since they walk on water, they don't provide an email address so that someone can tell them where they screwed up. Eventually, if they are really good, they reach the 3rd level. Anyone in the 3rd level knows they can make a mistake and keep things KISS simple so that they can fix them easily. They also leave an email address around so someone can tell them where there have an error. Unfortunately, Down's webmaster has apparently just reached the 2nd level. There is no web contact address.
I have been facinated with the mesoamerican culture aound Oaxaca, Mexico for a long time. I kept looking for a local artist and couldn't find one. It seems that I was doing all of the wrong things. I had no desire to watch the movie Frida. She did 4 of the soundtrack songs and sang in the movie. People have claimed that it was a tremendous boost to her career. I had been reading about her for years but didn't make the connection. Stan Gotlieb had tried on his "Real Oaxaca" web site. He had been bragging about Lila on his "Book and Cds" page for a number of years. It wasn´t that I didn´t try, I just wasn´t successful. You can learn a lot about Lila from the "Lila Downs" web site but I am usually more interested in the small details. You can't walk up to an artist and find out their life story. You would be arrested for stalking or something. A web page by Joan desde Barcelona is a good start.
One of the things I like about listening to Downs is the variety of styles that she sings in. You can listen to her CDs in a loop and think you have been listening to 4 or 5 different singers. She doesn't sing silly songs such as "Flies in the house". You listen to some people talk, Paris comes to mind, and they sound like they are still in High School. To someone over 50, they probably sound like their grandchildren and not someone you would want to talk to in a serious conversation. Some of them can make up for the lack of an education; however, it isn't the easiest thing to do. Downs is the daughter of a professor and has dual degrees. When you listen to her, she just exudes that she comes from a place of knowledge.
What I am going to list here is information about her background that I think are important and links so that you don't have to do a lot of web searching like I did. It will also point me to where I discovered things and allow me to not repeat those searches again. I was showing the CD cover of one of the albums to a Zapotec friend and she says, "I know her". The problem with English is that you don't know if that is a "conoces" or "conoce" know. To be introduced is a conoce but to really know someone, you need to be able to say conoces. She was working and I didn´t have the opportunity to really ask how she knew her. Now, I will have to remember for the week or so until I bump into her again. The odds of my remembering are not very good. All too often, she will say Hi!, ¡Hola!, ¿Como estas? or etc. on the way past and all I have time to do is to respond. Everyone in the buffet is friendly to the regulars and I eat there every day.
Lila sings in English, Mixteca, Zapoteco, and Mayan. One of the songs that was kind of strange was the "Medley" on Border (La Linea). It isn't often when a song sung by a singer that was born in Mexico is about the region where you live. The medley is by Lila and includes "Pastures of Plenty" by Woodie Guthrie. I moved into the Columbia Basin where much of the farm land on the East side of the Columbia River uses water from Grand Coulee Dam. You can see the circle farms from space. However, to a farmer, the usage of "pastures" is wrong because it is mostly row crops and not something to graze animals on. At some point, the PR brag of the lower Yakima Valley was that it provided 80% of the hops grown in the USA. This is Washington state and not Oregon like the song. Artist's take artistic license and Guthrie appears to have done that. You have to remember that you can not use a song as a basis of fact. The farm work that "los ilegales" could work on is disappearing. A victim of Washington States minimum wage law. It is cheaper to grow the crops someplace else because the labor to harvest them costs too much even if they are illegal.
I think Downs' work is very important because it is recording cultural stories of the people of Oaxaca Valley. They have been there, in the valley, for a 1000 years or so. There are some reports that have traced the Zapotecs to the first millenium. That is going on 3,000 years. Various groups have ruled until they encountered the Spanish. When modern society encounters the older cultures, it doesn't take many generations for the stories to be lost. A song on a CD passes the stories around. Will the CDs last a 1000 years? Of course not, they may not even last 100 years but they do introduce other people to the culture that have no other way of being involved.
The images are all hyperlinks to the corresponding web page at Amazon.com. I don't have a referral financial arrangement with Amazon because that would dilute my opinion. In addition, if you have any control over the sound level when you convert your Downs' CDs into mp3, wma, or etc., you need to make use of it. I find that I am constantly fiddling with the volume control on my Creative Nomad. This is the only set of multiple CDs by a single performer that I have to do that with.
| The disco compacto (CDROM) history of Downs basically begins with the release of "La Sandunga" in 1997 and rerelease "September 30, 2003". It was begun as a project by Downs and her amorcito, Paul Cohen. It was at least partially financed by a "Filantropía, Educacion, Cultura, A. C." grant. If you want to protect your indigenous cultures, you need to give the artists a start and they did. | |
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Tree of Life (Arbol de la vida) was released on September 12, 2000 . It is more of ancestral songs from the region around Oaxaca, Mexico but I happen to really like "Nueve viento koó sau" or Nine Winds. It is about the Mixtec mythical snake. There are two versions, a cloud snake and a rain snake. The song "Arenitz Azul" is about the prejudices that the black costal people face. Some one is asking "are you Cuban", "are you Jarocha" and they answer no to both. Then, they ask what would you like to be and the answer is a butterfly. The name for a butterfly is "mariposa" and the name for the Monarch butterfly is also mariposa. |
The Amazon sales ranking of "Tree of Life" is the lowest of the 4 CDs but I like it just less than "One blood". The ranking of "Nine Wind" on one of my subscriptions was 40th of 41 songs. I haven't heard enough of them to really rank anything but it is pretty high in my list of choices. So, it can be said that my preferences are skewed in a comparison with the general public. Downs' CDs make it easy because she explains each song.
| The third album is "Border" or "La Linea" and was released July 3, 2001. "The line" means much more here than "La Frontera", which is what you frequently see for the border. A line sounds artificial and a frontier sounds much more imposing. As easy as the "los ilegales" cross the line, it must not be that imposing. | |
The Border is more about the dificulties facing the people that have come over the line. They don't have papers and can not get good jobs. If people hire them, they can be fined by "La Migra". Some people take advantage of them and make them do work that no one else will do but others treat them as a necessary fact of life. Try and figure out something you enjoy and see if a "los ilegales" is not involved somewhere. Where people take advantage of them, it is a rough life but the choice is to go back and that can be much worse. México passed a law to guarantee equal employment to the indigenous people. A law is one thing but getting people to accept it is another.
I have a friend that would like to live in Calexico. She was born in Mexicali and being in Calexico would let her live and work in the USA, which would let her earn a wage that would support the US prices but it would also let her shop and visit relatives in Mexico. The prevaling wage across the border in the maquiladora factories is much lower. Working in Mexicali and shopping in Calexico would be expensive.
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The fourth album is "One Blood" or "Una Sangre". It was released June 15, 2004. This is the album that caught my attention. I liked it so well, that I went out two nights later to see what else I could buy. Finding it wasn't easy. Too many places have information kioskes and they called it "Mexican". Since Lila is Mixtec, she also qualifies as "Native American". I am surprised that I didn't find it there. |
Looking back I have to chuckle because the section "world/Native American" would have been much closer to her CDs than the "música latina" section was. As it was, I spent a lot of time in the Richland Hastings bookstore looking for "Una Sangre". After looking through the high part of the CD rack, I had kneeled down to look in the excess section, which is just above the floor. The clerks frequently don't know who is hot in the "música latina" market and you can find a brand new, top selling album down there and not on the rack. "Mi sangre" de Juanes was still on a cart 4 days after its release. Fortunately, before my knees started to hurt, one of the friendly clerks walked by and asked me if she could help. She had access to the computer and we looked it up. It also showed up in the computer as "Mexican" and we went back to where I had already looked. The computer is much more accurate as to placement than the kiosk is. The clerk disappears and the next thing I know she is walking around the end of the rack with the CD in her hand. That was when I learned it was considered "World" genre. Once you are enlightened, the rest is easy.
In some places in the track "One Blood", Lila sounds enough like Sade that I forgot who I had playing. I think it was the pronunciation of "desire" that caught my attention. It is strange how one word will trigger a memory. There are several songs that I just like the acoustic arrangement. The song "Cielo Rojo" or "Red Sky" is one of those songs. Malinche is another interesting song. It is sort of mariachi style. People talk about her singing in various styles. With the exception of a Mixtec or Zapotec song, she doesn't really fit any particular style. For example, the song may be mariachi but there will be a Cohen/Lila lick in there some place.
What were the side effects of listening to Una Sangre?. Well, I purchased all of her current CDs. I watched the movie Frida because she sang in several places. I had no desire to watch Frida. I enjoyed the movie. Hayek talks about it as a project that lasted 7 years before she could get it produced. I will buy the soundtrack CD because I liked the Frida soundtrack so well. There have been very few intervals of 10 days that have had the impact on my world that encountering the music of Lila Downs' has had.
Since I basically have all of Lila's released music, I can enjoy listening to all of it on my Nomad and move on. I was thinking about my next knowledge quest and "Maria de Barros" comes to mind. It is related because the thread started with Downs and went from there to Narada Music where I heard Barros sing. Some people are calling de Barros a "World Superstar". I don't know about that but she is very pretty and very easy to listen to. A Norah Jones that sings in Portuguese comes to mind. Selling 8 million copies of "Dança Ma Mi" (Dance With Me) would make her day.
I have no doubt in my mind that buying one of her CDs will also seriously complicate things. I can say that with a smile on my face. The question is also which CD do I want to be autographed. Maria supports the kind of crusades that I very strongly believe in. Buying a CD or CDs has positive side effects. The problem is that she sings mostly in Portuguese and I find listening to anything in Portuguese frustrating. You can understand the 50% of the words that it shares with Spanish and the rest make you want to learn enough to make it stop being frustrating. I will have to see how things develop.
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