Genre
Mexican folk, with rock, cumbia, ranchera, and mariachi elements. The album blends original compositions with newly arranged Mexican classics, drawing on Catholic devotional traditions and indigenous Oaxacan music.
Release
Released on October 18, 2011, by Sony Music Entertainment México, simultaneously with a museum exhibition — a series of specially commissioned retablos by contemporary Mexican painters, curated by Demian Flores, which opened at Mexico City's Museo Nacional de Arte.
Production
Produced by Lila Downs, Paul Cohen, and Aneiro Taño, with arrangements shared among Downs, Cohen, Taño, Juan Carlos Allende, Miguel Peña, and Celso Duarte. Collaborators included Celso Piña, Totó la Momposina, and Celso Duarte. Recorded at Sony Music Studio and AT Studio, Mexico City, and Soundworks Recording Studio, New York City.
Reception
Pecados y Milagros received universal acclaim, with a Metacritic score of 89 based on five reviews. It debuted at number one on the Billboard Top Latin Albums chart for over three consecutive weeks and at number 52 on the Billboard 200, selling over 290,000 copies worldwide. NPR praised it as a modern and self-aware transformation of Mexican tradition. It became the first album to win both the Grammy Award for Best Regional Mexican Music Album and the Latin Grammy Award for Best Folk Album.
Lila Downs
Ana Lila Downs Sánchez (born September 9, 1968, Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, Mexico) is a Mexican-American singer-songwriter, composer, and anthropologist. The daughter of Anita Sánchez — a Mixtec cabaret singer — and Allen Downs — a Scottish-American professor and filmmaker from Minnesota — she grew up between Oaxaca and the United States, studying classical voice and cultural anthropology at the University of Minnesota before committing fully to music. Her debut album, Ofrenda, appeared in 1994; international recognition followed with Border (2001). She sings in Spanish, English, and several indigenous Mexican languages including Mixtec, Zapotec, Nahuatl, and Maya. Chavela Vargas named her her artistic successor. She has performed at the Academy Awards (for her contribution to the Frida soundtrack), at the White House by invitation of President Obama, and at Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. She has won six Grammy and Latin Grammy Awards in total and has been nominated for nine.
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