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Sentimiento

Rancheras were singer's first love

Lila Downs was rushing around, getting ready to leave for her home in Oaxaca, Mexico. There were still errands to run and loose ends to tie up before she could embark from the apartment in New York's Lower East Side.

"It's a very old building," she says. "We're on top of a shul (synagogue). We're in one of the blocks that is still quite Hassidic."

Other cultures crowd her block, including Puerto Rican, Dominican Republican and Arabic.

"We're surrounded by Chinese buildings all around," Downs says of the apartment. "It's very modest in the sense that it has a lot of history. I can feel it and also see it.

"In Oaxaca, our house is a bit more modern, but we live in a little village, which is very old. The architecture of the houses is adobe brick and tile roofs, so it's quite a contrast, but they're both very important places, culturally speaking. It's a meeting of cultures in both cases."

Balancing a life on two fronts is something the singer has done since she was small. The daughter of a Mexican Indian mother and a Scottish American father, Downs began singing mariachi standards while still a child. Today, she often uses jazz, hip-hop and rock riffs, but is firmly rooted in the music of Mexico. Her newest release, Cantina: Entre Copa y Copa, a collection of vintage rancheras, reflects those roots and her Oaxacan upbringing.

"Mainly they were songs that my mama used to sing to me when I was little," she explains. "They mean something very special to me. They're the songs that were my first school of music.

"When I was five, according to my mother, I started to sing these songs and I would imitate some of the legendary ranchera singers like Lola Beltran or Flor Silvestre. I just love them. Mainly those two are my strong influences, but then my mother always played Lucha Reyes, Cuco Sanchez, Chavela Vargas, and Miguel Aceves Mejias."
 

A GOOD CRY

Just as the blues is to African American culture, rancheras are to Mexican music. For Downs, they represent a kind of safety valve, a way to let off emotional pressure in a beautiful way.

"I know that sometimes I have this real need to listen to ranchera music. I think it's mainly when I need to get something off my chest. It's music to sit down, have a bottle of tequila and cry," she says.

She mentions Mexico's Plaza Garibaldi where mariachis gather to play for visitors.

"You can ask them to play a song, or you can sing with them. It's amazing because... you go there and it's really about taking alcohol to a medicinal level, just sitting and crying and thinking about things that got you down."

In other words, it's a place where listening to rancheras purges the soul, releasing the listener's tension with poignant lyrics. Downs says rancheras have served a cathartic purpose in her life.

"I had some kind of rough things happening this past year," she admits. "It's a very important time for me to express my very inner self -- maybe a little bit less thinking, processing, criticizing and being outright political, but rather more inward and emotional about the things
that I'm feeling."

She characterizes Cantina as such, opposite to her last outing, the more politically charged One Blood/Una Sangre, which earned her a Latin Grammy for best folk album.

Among the rancheras on Cantina is La Cama de Piedra, a tune Downs says provokes conflicting feelings.

"La Cama de Piedra, the reason it's sounding like it's from the past, like it's on one of those phonograph players, is because my earlier memories of that song are (that)  it makes me feel very safe, which is very opposite of what the lyrics of the song say. It's about La
Revolucion, you know, it's about dying with five bullets in the heart, lyrics that were common for the revolucionarios."

Most of Cantina's cuts provide her with memories of home and her mother.

"I would have to say a song like Tu Recuerdo y Yo is very much at home for me. And La Noche de Mi Mal, it's a song thatÕs a bit more subtle than the other rancheras. I think I related to it because I was always a little bit different. My mom would say, '?Porque no canta Paloma Negra?'I loved Paloma Negra, and it was amazing to sing because it's a song that everybody wants to hear all the time, but it wasn't my favorite. My favorites were a little bit more subtle, they weren't plain and simple. But there's something in the lyrics that leave it open-ended. I really love that."

MUSIC AS MEDICINE

Downs and her band have played concerts with many other musicians from around the globe, including Arizona's Calexico.

"They're really something," she says of the mariachi-infused Tucson band. "We collaborated with them just recently at a concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and it was really, really cool. We paired up wonderfully. Joey's (Burns) style of singing is so beautiful."

When she appears at the Mesa Arts Center, Downs hopes her music moves the audience to connect with the intangible power of art, a force she believes has the power to heal emotional wounds.

"Someone was asking me the other day, do you think it's something about these songs, the way they're written or the lyrics," she says. "Sometimes you don't even have to know what the lyrics are. You can really just feel through the way the interpreter is delivering the song. There are these amazing songs that are out there, and they're just amazing conducts of this energy that needs to be released."

"I know that music has saved me from making certain harsh decisions. I think it can really help you make peace within yourself."

LILA DOWNS
8 p.m., April 13
Ikeda Theater,
Mesa Arts Center,
Center and Main, Mesa
Tickets: $25 - $45
Info: (480) 644-6500