On Wednesday night, Lila Downs and her band played a small concert in Islington, London, to mark the release of her new album Shake Away . Downs was born in Oaxaca, Mexico. Her mother was a cabaret singer, her father an academic from Minnesota, and she alternated life between them, one year at a time. Mexico and Minnesota, Downs mused recently from a Tijuana hotel room, "are a long way apart - geographically, culturally, climate-wise. I feel divided within. But music has enabled me to express that."

In her Mexican life, she sang at weddings and quinceañeras (coming of age ceremonies). She nearly became an anthropologist. But an encounter with the political singer Mercedes Sosa changed her mind. "I thought, OK, you can sing but also sing about your convictions."