Lila Downs - Shake Away / Ojo de Culebra
Lila Downs, the massively versatile Mexican folklore singer is back with a new album called Shake Away/Ojo de Culebra. For those who have never listened to her music, you can think of her as a figure similar to Yma Sumac, the multi octave singer of jazzy latin folk music with exotic arrangements. Lila Downs takes things a step further, performing great feats of musical anthropology as she sings in various indigenous dialects together with Spanish and an ever growing number of English songs as well. Also for a world music singer, her music does not really comply with the yuppie optimism expected of the genre. Instead she builds most of her repertoire out of sorrowful drinking songs, dark folklore and musings on immigration and poverty. Also her incredibly talented band always injects something strange and wonderful to each song, sometimes taking the form of jazzy improvisations and sometimes manifesting as strangely cinematic passages reminiscent of Danny Elfman.
Shake Away falls in with the rest of Lila Downs discography, only with a huge injection of English language tracks. And as somebody who is studying to be a translator I find it extremely interesting that several tracks exist in both English and Spanish versions, with re-worked titles and lyrics. Also her esoteric interpretation of Black Magic Woman (in which she casts herself as the titular character) moves back and forth between English and Spanish, and appears appropriately in the middle of the album. And while I'm on this subject I have to admit that by far my favorite song on the album is in English, by which I mean Skeleton. It rocks at a great pace with a 30s jazz beat mixed with Lila’s acrobatic vocals and some great horns, sax and accordion.
On the Spanish language tracks you will find a slew of interesting guests including Enrique Bunbury, Mercedes Sosa, Gilberto Gutierrez and the singer from Café Tacuba. Amongst the Spanish songs the best are Los Pollos which is full of southern Mexican charm and Justicia with its mix of tropical and pop sensibilities.
In either language, the title tracks (Ojo de Culebra/Shake Away) sing about freeing yourself from the curse of your accumulated sorrows, shaking them off like a serpents scales. Another song that appears in two separate versions is I Envy The Wind by Lucianda Williams, which is equally haunting in both its Ranchera Spanish and torch song English versions.
While I don't consider this to be Lila's strongest release to date I do think it is her best balanced one, and I am also surprised how much I enjoyed her inclusion of English tracks. Still I am hoping that she will swing back in the other direction with the next album giving us another collection of Mexican and Indigenous songs which she does so well.