culture
Daily PANAMANIA Tip Sheet: Lila Downs
You know what’s world-class? PANAMANIA’s music festival programming. Here’s our guide to the must-see free music shows of the day, every day, during the fest.
Lila Downs
PANAMANIA Live @ Nathan Phillips Square (100 Queen Street West)
Wednesday, July 15 at 7:30 p.m.
Well before Canadian artists like A Tribe Called Red and Tanya Tagaq began defying musical genres with their stylized fusion of Indigenous elements with more broadly familiar Western song conventions, Mexican-American singer-songwriter Lila Downs was enhancing Latin and American folk with Oaxacan flair and hard-nosed Indigenous activism. The half-Mixtec, half-American Downs was born and raised in Oaxaca and speaks fluent Mixtec and English in addition to Spanish, and her output reflects both her hybrid identity and commitment to cultural preservation. But noble intentions aside, the Grammy-winning artist is just plain brilliant, with a haunting contralto that harkens to the masterwork of ranchera queen Chavela Vargas.