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Lila Downs and Monsieur Periné bring their Latin-influenced sounds to Segerstrom Center for the Arts

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Mexican-American singer Lila Downs will return to the Segerstrom Center for the Arts on April 23 with leading Colombian music group Monsieur Periné. The double concert will feature global music and Latin-influenced sounds.

A Grammy and four-time Latin Grammy winner, Downs said she reflects the cultures of Oaxaca, Mexico, and the U.S., in which she grew up. She sings in Spanish and English, sometimes incorporating indigenous Mixtec, Zapotec and Maya.

Backed by her band, La Misteriosa, Downs will spotlight favorites and new songs from her forthcoming album, which she said is centered on women.

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“It’s about our human condition of needing and wanting it all, war, peace and sexuality,” Downs said by phone, noting that her songs comment on social and political conditions, love and life. “It’s rediscovering myself as a woman during a time with everything happening in politics, and it’s a reaction to that. It’s angry feminism coming out; it’s about confrontation.”

Catalina Garcia, lead singer of the Bogota-based Monsieur Periné, said the band connects 1930s Paris with modern-day Colombia by mixing traditional South American instruments and genres like samba, bolero and tango with jazz.

The ensemble won the Latin Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 2015 and earned a Grammy nomination for its most recent album, “Caja de Musica.”

Garcia said the concert celebrates cultures and iconic Latin American women artists like Carmen Miranda and Celia Cruz.

“Women in Latina American art and culture had a really important role — not as the women today who appear in the industry who are seen as a body and nothing else,” Garcia said by phone from Colombia. “We had these amazing women who built a way to think and express as a Latin woman. You can be feminine, beautiful, expressive and also seductive. You don’t have to be a slave — you are empowered to build a language. These women are great examples of that.”

Lila Downs with Monsieur Periné will perform at 7 p.m. April 23 at Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets start at $29. For more information, call (714) 556-2787 or visit scfta.org.

kathleen.luppi@latimes.com

Twitter: @KathleenLuppi

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