Lila Downs: weaving songs across borders: this popular Mexican-born artist gives voice to indigenous communities while creating a musical language of her own.

• Author: Montesinos, Elisa
• Position: Interview

One day last summer, arriving at Lila Downs's house in New York City's Chinatown, I realize immediately that she's forgotten about our interview. She and her partner, Paul Cohen, are in the midst of composing--intensely it seems. Cohen is a saxophonist who has been with Downs since the days in Oaxaca when she was still searching for her own language and voice. They are also washing clothes. "Housework, you know. But the good news is that I have composed a cumbia," she says. The keyboard and the guitars lying on top of the multicolored woven upholstery are signs of the feverish work that has kept them from eating lunch. They are working on a CD of cantina music called La Cantina (released under the Narada label last March).

Downs became widely known to U.S. audiences for her singing role in the movie Frida, which starred Mexican actress Salma Hayek as the painter Frida Kahlo. (At the Academy Awards in 2003, Downs gave a riveting performance of the nominated song from the movie, "Burn It Blue.") In fact, Downs's looks and style of dress have led a few people to compare her to Kahlo. Downs attributes this to ignorance. "If you go to a town in Mexico, you'll see hundreds of Fridas; the strange thing is to see them here. You have to teach people here, because they don't know," she says emphatically.

With a North American father, Downs spent her childhood crossing the border repeatedly. Maybe that's why her music later acquired this same tendency. Latin American rhythms mix with the blues, hip hop, and jazz; and indigenous languages blend with Spanish and English. "They say she's a musician of the world," says Cohen, the artistic director of the band. "But then, what would it be if it weren't? Music from Mars?"

"In some way, you respond to what the public asks of you," says Downs. "But the challenge for me now is to break out of the mold I've created for myself and to create other compositions that aren't necessarily ethnic." But the interesting thing is that her music tends not to be classified within a single genre.

When it comes to the things that have influenced her, Downs mentions the weavings of indigenous women and the ever-present flow of their conversations that she learned to decipher. Also the stories of her fellow Mixtec people. "It affected me in a personal way when I had to translate a death certificate once. I was working in my mother's store in Tlaxiaco [her hometown] after I finished my degree in anthropology. My mother was a...