Friday, July 11, 2025

Lila Downs dedicates Bellas Artes concerts to her Mixtec grandmother

Lila Downs, a Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter from Oaxaca, is dedicating her two concerts in Mexico City this week to hardworking women such as her Mixtec grandmother.

The Tlaxiaco native will perform at the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts) in the capital’s historic center on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In an interview with the newspaper Reforma, the singer and recording artist noted that her maternal grandmother, Matilde Sánchez, was a vendor of pulque, a pre-Hispanic alcoholic beverage made with the sap of the maguey plant.

Downs said that performing for the first time in the “sacred precinct” of the Palacio de Bellas Artes gives her the opportunity to represent her grandmother and other hardworking women. “She taught me what is sacred about life,” she said of Sánchez.

Downs, the daughter of a Mixtec mother and a father from the United States, said that although she has never performed at Bellas Artes, she considers her upcoming concerts a homecoming because she studied opera there when she was a teenager before going on to study singing and social anthropology in the U.S.

“I started at Bellas Artes when I was 16 years old and I return, in this cycle of life, in my 50s, transformed,” she said.

“Moreover, I return with this song of women, which is very important for me,” said the Grammy and Latin Grammy-winning singer.

Social injustice, migration, women’s struggles, identity and spirituality are some of the themes Downs explores in her heartfelt songs. One was inspired by a tree she looked at through a window of her home every morning during the initial pandemic lockdown period.

In making her music, which spans genres including jazz, rock, ranchera and cumbia, Downs said she has taken inspiration and advice from her mother, Anita Sánchez, who was also a singer.

“I even started paying attention to my mother’s words; she told me ‘Lila, sing with feeling or don’t sing at all,’” she said.

Following her two concerts at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Downs will embark on a tour of the United States before heading to Europe.

With reports from Reforma 

Have something to say? Paid Subscribers get all access to make & read comments.
A small plane flies over the ocean

How the Mexican security minister’s slip of the tongue rankled Salvadoran President Bukele

2
President Bukele took exception after García Harfuch's identified a drug-smuggling plane as coming from El Salvador.
gold bars

Highway robbery near Guadalajara nets 6 million pesos worth of gold and silver

0
Such open-road heists have risen in frequency recently and could pose a threat to potential investors otherwise attracted by nearshoring opportunities.
Security chief Omar García Harfuch, Attorney General Gertz and other Mexian officials sit on a stage in front of a banner reading "National Strategy against Extortion" in spanish

Authorities launch national strategy against extortion to tackle a pernicious and widespread crime

1
The strategy contemplates new laws that would force states to investigate the crime, even when victims are too afraid to make an official report.
BETA Version - Powered by Perplexity