Lila Downs was born in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca in 1968, and grew up there and in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She began singing ranchera music at an early age, and later sang at the fiestas of the towns in her mountain region, la Mixteca. She sang with the band Los Cadetes de Yodoyuxi and later with La Trova Serrana, a group of folk musicians from the Zapotec town of Guelatao, Oaxaca. At that time she met her musical collaborator Paul Cohen and began to create her own musical compositions, which tap into native Mesoamerican music of the Mixtec, Zapotec, Maya and Nahuatl cultures. Cohen went on to become both Downs's husband and her artistic director.
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Downs is the daughter of Mixtec cabaret singer Anita Sánchez and Allen Downs, a Scottish/English-American professor of art and cinematographer from Minnesota. She grew up partly in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, partly in California as a teen, and Minnesota as an adult where she studied voice and social anthropology at the University of Minnesota. She also studied in a school of fine arts (Bellas Artes) in Oaxaca when she later returned to Mexico where she learned to weave.
In recent years, Downs and her band have toured widely in Mexico, South America, the US and Europe. She was also heard in the soundtrack to the movie Frida in a song, Burn it Blue, that was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song and that she performed at the 75th Academy Awards. Other songs that she performed on the soundtrack are "Benediction and Dream," "Estrella Oscura," and "La Llorona." Other movies with a Lila Downs song are Tortilla Soup, Real Women Have Curves and Fados by Carlos Saura. She was also invited to the Twelve Girls Band's concert in Shanghai, where she sings in French and English. Downs is currently based in Coyoacán, a borough of Mexico City.
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