Artist Bio

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Lila Downs is one of the most influential artists in Latin America. She has one of the world’s most singular voices, and is known for her charismatic performances. Her own compositions often combine genres and rhythms as diverse as Mexican rancheras and corridos, boleros, jazz standards, hip-hop, cumbia, and North American folk music. Her music often focuses on social justice, immigration, and women’s issues. 

She grew up in both Minnesota and Oaxaca Mexico, her mother is from the Mixtec indigenous group, and her father was Scottish-American. Lila sings in Spanish, English, and varios Native American languages as Zapotec, Mixtec, Nahuatl, Maya, and Purepecha. 

She has recorded duets with artists as diverse as Mercedes Sosa, Caetano Veloso, Juanes, Norah Jones, YoYo Ma, Juan Gabriel, Carla Morison, Natalia LaFourcade, Santana, The Chieftains, Nina Pastori, Soledad, Diego La Cigala, Aida Cuevas, Toto La Momposina, and Bunbury. Chavela Vargas “named” Lila her “sucessor”. 

She has sung with symphonies such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony and the UNAM symphony in Mexico, as well as with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. She has given concerts at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, the Hollywood Bowl, Auditorio Nacional and Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, Gran Rex in Buenos Aires. She was invited by Barack Obama to sing at the White House, and has performed at the Oscars for her participation in the film Frida. Her music has also been included in several other feature films such as The Counselor, Tortilla Soup, Real Women Have Curves, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Carlos Saura's Fados, Mariachi Gringo, and Hecho en México. 

Lila has recorded nine studio albums. She has been nominated for nine Grammy Awards and has won six. 

Besides her musical career, she involves herself with humanitarian causes and political activism, especially dealing with issues of Latin America's indigenous population.

Please visit and donate to the organizations which Lila works hand in hand with:

El Fondo Guadalupe Musalem A.C., www.fondoguadalupemusale.org

Playing For Change

https://www.playingforchange.com/es/about

Zero Maternal Deaths

https://www.paho.org/en/zero-maternal-deaths

Best known as one half of the hilariously irreverent, satirical, counter-culture, no-holds-barred duo Cheech and Chong (now on tour), Cheech Marin is a paradox in the world of entertainment. Cheech is an actor, director, writer, musician, art collector, and humanitarian, a man who has enough talent, humor, and intelligence to do just about anything. He is truly a multi-generational star. To this day, Cheech and Chong films remain the number one weekend video rentals, and Cheech is widely acknowledged as a cultural icon. Cheech’s long-awaited memoir entitled Cheech is Not My Real Name…But Don’t Call Me Chong! was released in 2017.

Cheech (real name Richard) Marin was born in South Central Los Angeles and met Tommy Chong in Vancouver, British Columbia as a political refugee. The duo moved back to Los Angeles and proved to be “entertainment gold.” Six of their albums went gold, four were nominated for Grammys, and Los Cochinos won the 1973 Grammy for Best Comedy Recording. The critically acclaimed duo made a fluid transition to films, starring in eight features together.

During his split with Chong, Cheech wrote, directed, and starred in the comedy Born In East L.A. He appeared in over 20 films, including his scene-stealing role in Tin Cup. On television, Cheech was a sitcom regular before joining Don Johnson on the highly successful CBS drama Nash Bridges (1996-2001). He later had a recurring role on the hit NBC show, Lost, and in recent years, he guest-starred on Rob and Jane the Virgin. Through his popular Disney Pixar animation film roles (Oliver & Company, The Lion King, Cars, and more) and as an author of children’s books such as Cheech the School Bus Driver, Cheech is also a favorite with kids and parents around the world.

In 2009, everyone’s favorite duo reunited after 25 years apart for a national and international comedy tour, the Light Up America reunion tour, selling out everywhere. They also shot a full-length live comedy film Hey Watch This in 2010. The pair followed with subsequent tours, satisfying audiences thirsty to see the pair together. They continue to perform together as their schedules allow.

CHICANO ART COLLECTOR & ADVOCATE

Cheech is recognized today as a preeminent Chicano art advocate. In the mid-1980s, he began developing what is now arguably the finest private collection of Chicano art. Much of it formed the core of his inaugural exhibition Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge, which broke attendance records during its groundbreaking 15‐city tour during 2001‐2007 to major art museums across the United States. He states, “Chicano art is American art. My goal is to bring the term ‘Chicano’ to the forefront of the art world.”

Following the success of Chicano Visions, over a dozen additional exhibitions drawn from the Cheech Marin Collection have toured more than 50 major art museums across the United States and in Europe under the direction of Melissa Richardson Banks. In addition, art books have been independently published to accompany many of these exhibitions, including Papel Chicano: Works on Paper from the Collection of Cheech Marin, Chicanitas: Small Paintings from the Cheech Marin Collection, and Papel Chicano Dos: Works on Paper from the Collection of Cheech Marin. Artwork from his collection inspires his work in other ways. For example, the bottle design of Tres Papalote Mezcal, for which Cheech serves as the brand ambassador, was inspired by the contemporary glass sculptures and other works of Einar and Jamex de la Torre, two brothers who are represented his collection.

CHICANO ART EXHIBITIONS

Furthering his goal to introduce Chicano art to a wider audience, Marin has entered a partnership with the City of Riverside and Riverside Art Museum to create The Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture, and Industry. Slated to open in 2021, The Cheech will become the permanent home for his more than 700 works of Chicano art, including paintings, sculptures, and photography; collectively, the most renowned Chicano art collection in the United States.

CHARITY GOLF TOURNAMENTS

Cheech is a nationally ranked golfer, active in the charity circuit. Married to Russian-born classical pianist Natasha Marin, the couple resides in Pacific Palisades, California.

Anne Wilkes Tucker was born in 1945 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and studied at Randolph Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia. In 1967 she received a B.A. in Art History and then went on to receive an AAS in Photography at Rochester Institute of Technology. In 1972, she earned a Master of Fine Arts in Photographic History from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York that was part of the State University of New York, Buffalo. While at the VSW, she worked part time at the Eastman house and studied under Beaumont Newhall, the writer of the history of photography and photographer/curator Nathan Lyons. She then interned with John Szarkowski, the Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1975 she moved to Houston and shortly after she started the photography collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. 

She acquired for the museum's collection  over 30,000 photographs which were made on all seven continents. She also curated forty exhibitions, most with catalogues, including the award-winning books The History of Japanese Photography and WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: IMAGES OF ARMED CONFLICT AND ITS AFTERMATH. Her writings include essays and interviews in over 100 monographs, catalogues, and magazines.

In 2001, TIME magazine honored Tucker as "America's Best Curator." She was the first recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Focus Award from the Griffin Museum of Photography in 2006, and received an Alumnae Achievement Award from Randolph Macon Woman's College. In 2011 she received an honorary doctorate from the College at Brockport State University of New York.

She was granted the title of Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photographs in 1984. In 2014, she announced her retirement from the Museum and finally stepped away in June of 2015.