Lila Downs 'La Sandunga'

By Christopher M. Wright
  © 2011 Christopher M. Wright
  All Rights Reserved

AIM's 'Discovery' distinction is reserved for music that is the best of its kind. Lila Downs is a folk heroine to the Mixteca people of central Mexico and her 'La Sandunga' album conveys indigenous culture better than any other AIM has seen to date.

Lila Downs was born to a Scottish-American father and Mixteca mother. The music covers an expansive emotional range, from sad ballad to the festive and humorous. Downs' vocal techniques also cover quite a range. The amount of training that went into her voice is evident and the number of different vocal effects she can achieve is truly impressive. Her voice is a good match for the range of emotions the music expresses. While she shares writing credits on a few tracks, most are written by others or are traditional.

'La Sandunga' is a blend of Spanish, European waltz, and indigenous styles, such amalgamation characterizing a number of tracks on the album. The song is of a woman who expresses grief while hugging her mother's dead body. Even more shocking and eerie is 'La Llorona', also in 3/4 time, a traditional song about a woman who in one version of the story drowns her children in the river after her husband finds out she has taken a lover. The guilt drives her mad, she dies, but her soul  cannot rest, appearing at night in lament for the children she herself killed. 

'Cancion Mixteca' is about the mythical king of the migratory Mixteca people. 'Yunu Yucu Ninu' praises the trees of the forest that provide so much and stand in such bewitching beauty.

The voice, the emotional range, the cultural significance - put it all together and a true musical adventure awaits.

© 2011 Christopher M. Wright
All Rights Reserved - This material may not be republished, rebroadcast, rewritten, redistributed, resold, or manipulated in any form.

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