Lila Downs Performance as a Transgressive Model for Latina/o Studies

This paper addresses the music and performance of Lila Downs, a Oaxacan / Mexican / Chicana / Latina / transnational artist. I argue that Lila Downs’ performance of identity provides a platform to study Latinidad as a place... [ view full abstract ]

This paper addresses the music and performance of Lila Downs, a Oaxacan / Mexican / Chicana / Latina / transnational artist. I argue that Lila Downs’ performance of identity provides a platform to study Latinidad as a place of enunciation from which we can extrapolate the shifting boundaries of what it means to inhabit a Latino/a identity in the twenty first century in the United States. As I argue elsewhere, Downs’ version of Latinidad resembles a multimedia collage containing folkloric and popular musical genres, Mexican cultural icons, indigenous textiles, and language diversification to seamlessly fuse sound and image. Ultimately shifting between a regional, national and transnational ethno-scape from which she could be signified depending on her audience. Thus, I am asking if Downs’ adaptability to embody the politics of location, dis-location, and immigration can work as a model to articulate a platform from which we can discuss the broader Latina/o experience. As a case study Lila Downs suggests that Latinidad is no longer rooted in place, but that it is part of global mass culture. Downs provides us with a significantly different model of transculturation from which we can interpret Latinidad as a truly fluid concept that reflects the history of immigration, exile and displacement in Latina/o communities.

In this paper I argue that Latina/o Studies must interrogate itself beyond the disciplinary and departmental boundaries imposed by academic scholarship and turf oversight. Thus, where does Latina/o Studies stands today as an academic discipline, as a community, and as a theoretical articulation depends very much on the location from we are speaking and writing from. Following Suzanne Oboler’s and Anani Dzidzienyo’s articulation of hemispheric flows and counter flows of literary and cultural practices including gender and racial categories, I ask how Latina/o Studies can conceptualize a new paradigm that loosens our interpretation of knowledge away from the rigidity of the nation state to encompass a broader understanding of transnational (cultural flow) and global (labor crossing borders) practices. Much like Lila Downs decolonizes indigeneity by re-signifying the classical interpretation of the huipil, I am suggesting that we in Latino/a Studies can explore Jose David Saldivar’s notion of “Americanity” to “shift the framework and the perspective” of how we read and interpret the Global South. More specifically, how do we remap Latina Studies to be more inclusive and yet retain the specificity that simultaneously defines it as an academic discipline and maintains a Gramscian sense of community.