Ford Theatres Presents Lila Downs Día de Muertos: Al Chile

Ford Theatres presents Lila Downs Día de Muertos: Al Chile, an extravaganza with Grandeza Mexicana Folk Ballet Company, one of Los Angeles' premier folklorico dance companies; Mariachi Femenil Flores Mexicanas, established as one of the Southwest's leading all-female mariachi groups; and art installations by LORE Media & Arts on Saturday, October 19 and Sunday, October 20, 2019 at 8:00pm at the Ford Theatres in Hollywood.

They join headliner, six-time GRAMMY Award-winner Lila Downs, in a program that includes songs from her new album Al Chile. From her Mixtec Indian heritage to her fusion of international sounds and musical genres, Lila -- singing in Spanish, English, and sometimes even the languages of the Mixtec, Zapotec, Maya, and Nahuatl cultures -- will display her ability to meld reinterpretations of blues, jazz and soul to cumbia, rock, even rap, and klezmer as well as her deeply personal renditions of classic rancheras.

Music, dance, and ritual will take audiences on a voyage of emotions, movement, and sound that celebrate the rich traditions of the Day of the Dead. The program invites the audience to celebrate death as a natural phase in life's continuum and to honor the traditions of Mexican and native Mesoamerican cultures.

At Día de Muertos: Al Chile, audience members are encouraged to come dressed in imaginative Día de los Muertos costumes and make-up, to bring remembrances of their loved ones to share in the celebration, and to become fully immersed in an evening filled with love, loss, remembrance, and joy. The Ford Theatres stage, entryway and plaza areas will be transformed by LORE Media & Arts' whose local and Southwest artists will create larger-than-life Mesoamerican-inspired sugar skulls, an altar installation, and a Oaxacan Día de los Muertos mural by Lucretia Torva.

Tickets are available online at FordTheatres.org and by phone (323) 461-3673. Ford Theatres is located at 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood, CA 90068

Part of an eight-city US tour, Lila Downs' Día de Muertos: Al Chile will perform on Saturday, October 27, 2019 at 7:00pm at the Segerstrom Center for the Performing Arts in Costa Mesa. Tickets for Segerstrom Center are available online at www.SCFTA.org, at the Box Office at 600 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa 92626 or by calling (714) 556-2787.

Accompanying Día de Muertos: Al Chile at the Ford Theatres is our Día de los Muertos Community Celebration, a free event taking place from 10:00am to 1:00pm on October 19 and 20, 2019, all over the Ford's entryway gardens and plaza spaces. Produced by LORE Media & Arts, these family-friendly celebrations include face painting, live music, food, craft activities, live mural painting and more.

Parking for the day's activities is $5.00, nonstacked. Also GO METRO: FREE shuttles from the Universal City/Studio City Metro station will be running.

Rolling Stone says of her latest album, "With Al Chile, Lila Downs continues to dignify the lives of marginalized communities, and honor their traditions via street-style cumbia and the rural, vibrant sounds of Mexican pueblos. Just like Mexico's strange and complicated connection with the piquante chili pepper, the themes in the album explore those burning sensations that cause 'happiness, suffering, pain, and tears,' Downs says. 'They remind us of the thin line between love and pain.'"

Remezcla.com notes, "She invites her listeners to break out and unleash the anxieties of a tumultuous political era, and she's offered them a vehicle for that release with a swath of exuberant new songs. On Al Chile, she's infused her traditional sound with live wire energy and light electronic flourishes, building a sonic entreaty that is flashier, more impulsive, and more experimental than her previous work."

The Yucatan Times wrote, "an album so diverse that it counts, with the collaboration of several Mexican traditional music bands and the participation of American singer Norah Jones. Downs combines cumbia and ranchera and includes titles such as 'La Llorona,' sung in Spanish and Zapotec, the indigenous language of Downs' mother, and 'Los caminos de la vida,' which includes lyrics in Mixtec (another language of the Oaxaca region)."

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