Latin diva Lila Downs embraces the many facets of Día de Los Muertos

As a native of Oaxaca, singer-songwriter Lila Downs has developed a close relationship with Mexico’s traditional Día de Los Muertos holiday. But given the heartbreak of recent years, she admits, “It definitely feels like I own it.”

After a long illness, her husband and artistic partner Paul Cohen died in 2022. For more than 30 years, they had been inseparable, with Paul serving as producer, bandleader, arranger, songwriting collaborator, life partner and “my buddy.” Then suddenly she had to adjust to life without her longtime love and musical ally.

As the annual Día de Los Muertos holiday approaches, it must be an especially bittersweet time for Downs.

“It is. Since my husband died, the days are filled with all these obligations,” she said in a video call from her home in Oaxaca (a state in southern Mexico), on a day off between tour stops. She and her band will perform in an SCP Special Concert with a Día de Los Muertos theme on Oct. 27 at Orchestra Hall. Joining her will be the Mexican Folkloric Dance Company of Chicago.

During the Día de Los Muertos holiday, observed from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2 in Mexico (and elsewhere in Latin America), prayers are offered for deceased family and friends to aid them on their journey to the afterlife. The holiday (which overlaps the Christian celebrations of All Saints and All Souls Day on Nov. 1-2) and its traditions also have inspired Downs throughout her career, including tracks on her most recent disc, the Grammy-nominated “La Sánchez” (Sony, 2023). As with her previous 10 studio albums, it reflects Downs’ distinctive bicultural existence while growing up in Mexico and Minnesota as the daughter of American professor Allen Downs and singer Anita Sánchez, of Mixtec (one of Mexico’s indigenous populations) heritage.

“But it’s really wonderful how our traditions in Mexico help us with that kind of pain,” she said. “And the fact that you can find solace somehow. ... It’s kind of like Christmas, because it’s a similar holiday.

“It’s about gathering and giving and remembering. So it’s tough emotionally, but it’s also beautiful and warm, and that sense of spirituality helps. Every part of this ritual has to do with the enormous amount of love that we have for our ancestors, and this is what I want to represent on the stage.”

"Every part of Day of the Dead has to do with the enormous amount of love that we have for our ancestors, and this is what I want to represent on the stage.” — Lila Downs

After Paul’s death, Día de Los Muertos has taken on a different resonance for Downs. “It definitely feels like I own it,” she said. “It’s one of those things that’s very familiar to me.

“Certainly the notion of death and the philosophical questions it triggers is something that you ponder. And then there’s also [the fear of] the possibility of going off the deep end. That’s always been scary for me, because I lost my father when I was 16.

“And it was pretty hard. I remember making a promise to myself, saying, OK, if someone close to me dies, I will try to be prepared. But there’s nothing ... I mean, you can’t be prepared for death. It’s one of those things that takes over your life. Then there’s the societal aspect. Being a widow is still very tough to deal with.

“It’s not as bad as it was when I lost my father back in the ’80s. But there’s still some of that. People assume that you’re just lost, and you don’t know what you’re doing because you’re a lady. And that’s sad.”

People unfamiliar with Day of the Dead might not realize that it’s primarily a celebration of life.

Does Downs still feel that way? “Oh, yeah. Of course. Also, there’s the element that we get to enjoy death.”

Another aspect is the tradition of telling stories. ”It’s 40 days before Nov. 2 that the dead start coming,” she said. “I remember this from my childhood because a door would shut, and they’d be like, they’re here. And there would be some strange light on the kitchen table — there are these beautiful things that life gives us and that we get to cherish. Like there are people coming back to see us, and we re-experience all the beautiful things about them.

“For instance, you might hear some music. I’ve heard a clarinet playing [at home], because Paul’s studio is right below our kitchen. I know I’ve heard him play lately. It’s beautiful to be able to sing songs about this.”

For her Chicago concert, Downs will perform tracks from “La Sánchez” and works from across her career. “We’re doing some of our concert favorites. We’ve seen that some of the songs from ‘La Sánchez’ are already audience favorites.”

Expect to hear “Son de Difuntos” (“Song of the Deceased,” from her 2015 disc “Balas y Chocolate”) and “Viene la Muerte Echando Rasero” (“Here Comes Death, Wielding a Scythe,” also from “Balas y Chocolate”) and “La Llorona” (“The Weeping Woman,” a traditional Mexican song).

“We’re very fortunate to have a bank of songs about the dead,” Downs said. “It’s something very comforting. It’s like coming to terms with what has happened.

“It’s very reassuring to do this music right now because I’ve already done two tours that are Day of the Dead-themed [since 1922]. And they are very special concerts."

Downs once called death-themed “Balas y Chocolate” “one of the happiest albums” she’d done. “Death certainly brings out our best,” she said. “It pushes you to realize how valuable life is.”

For “La Sánchez,” Downs had composed around 16 songs, “which had never happened before. And I just threw most of them out, and I ended up singing other people’s songs. It had to do with the loss that was coming up, Paul’s last year. His life was quite difficult. He was really struggling. It was hard for him to go upstairs.

“Then we had had a difficult relationship work-wise and that made things complicated. In one way, though, we also decided to go our own ways, and that was very helpful because for this album, he was like, ‘OK, you’re going to produce it.’ I think he was proud of me that way.

“And I’m proud of myself that way. He was really devoted to his jazz in the last year. He was constantly playing with trios and quartets here at the club that we have in Oaxaca.”

“La Sánchez” has been called one of Downs’ most personal albums. All of her albums are very personal, but is there something about this one in particular? “I think it’s the most introspective one I’ve done,” she said. “ ‘La Cantina’ (2006) was a little bit like that, but it also had a lot of very festive songs. This album is a little less festive. It’s mainly about really processing pain.

“We Mexicans, we’re pretty good at that. It’s like we have this patience or something. It might have something to do with some of the music that we listen to. It’s very intense because it really is honest about just losing everything. And it can be quite stark. That is something in northern music that’s quite beautiful."

Downs’ embrace of myriad regional Mexican genres, such as banda, norteño and cumbia, on “La Sánchez” is remarkable. She’s done that throughout her career, but to hear her do banda-style arrangements is so inviting, so compelling. Several cuts evoke the landmark Juan Gabriel album “Con La Banda … El Recodo” (1998), which marked the summit of two titans of Latin music. It really hits the spot. (Banda music features brass, clarinet and percussion in the traditional styles of rancheras, corridos, cumbias, boleros and valz.)

“Well, thank you. I enjoy it so much, too. Like my mother always says, ‘There’s no fiesta if there’s no banda.’ She’s like, ‘Oh, that’s not even a fiesta. There’s no banda.’

“So I love that. And I love El Norte style of songs. And I would say that I had been working on this more northern-style music for two years” before it jumped in popularity, with the rise of young Mexican hitmakers such as Peso Pluma. “It’s exciting to see that genre come out of the woodwork. And those kids in the north, they made it move, they made it change and made it accessible for people because of its messages, which are sometimes not very positive toward women.

“In the south of the country, we relate to other kinds of genres, and we have our own style, we’re more indigenous. But the bandas that we have here in Oaxaca have another sound. So whenever we perform here in Oaxaca, I sing with that southern-style banda, its rhythms are quite different and some things are similar, and the styles of singing, of course, vary quite a bit as well.

“So it’s beautiful to hear those differences. Those are the things I love to talk about at our concerts, to pay respect to the north and pay respect to the south and teach people about how these varieties of music are very much alive.”

“La Sánchez” also has been described as “Downs telling her story through its various songs.” The title is a nod to her mother. “And each song does take you on a little journey of the things that I have been living," she said.

“Some of them have been difficult. And then some. But I’m so happy they have accompanied me, like ‘Dos Corazones’; it was quite hard for me to sing in the beginning, because it made me think of how Paul and I had troubles, like a couple sometimes does.

“We had a difficult time a bit before he passed. But now I think about that song, and I think, oh, that’s my buddy, that’s my friend I can hold on to. That’s beautiful when music does that to your heart.”

Another track has a different sort of hold on her: “Toda La Noche.” “I cannot sing that song in concert. It makes me tear up. But I know I’ll eventually get there.”

On “La Sánchez,” she covers “En El Último Trago” (“On the Last Drink”), one of the most famous songs by José Alfredo Jiménez, an icon of Mexican ranchera music. On why this particular tune speaks to her, she said, “It’s interesting. It’s a song that I actually started performing when Paul was around.”

When she had to choose one more song for “La Sánchez,” she mentioned it to Orlando Aspuro Meneses, who co-produced several tracks on the disc, and said she wanted to do it in a banda arrangement.

Though he’s only 26 or 24, “he’s kind of like a señor [old soul],” she said. He told her, “ ‘I would like to do a take on this song because it really represents a lot to me because we lost Paul in the middle of all this.’

“I told him my idea of using the banda, kind of minimalistic. He did this beautiful intro with the guitars. It kind of feels like it’s going to take you to a pop song, but then it comes back to José Alfredo. He also did a very minimal harmonic change that also makes it a little sweeter.

“It really made us connect, he and I as collaborators, but also with the intention that it’s Paul’s last drink, you know, with him. It worked out beautifully that way.”

Downs celebrated her birthday on Sept. 9; always youthful, she’s now rounding the corner on 60. “Can you believe it? Yeah, I’m already 56.”

But she has no plans to slow down. “I still have things to say, and I’m grateful that the voice is still there. And it’s my life. I need to sing.”