2023-10-04 21:57:32
For Silvana Estradawinner of the 2022 Latin Grammy for Best New Artist, her first sold-out concert in Chile was a genuine surprise: when she learned that the October 17 show at the Nescafé de las Artes Theater had sold out all its tickets in less than two days, more What happiness, a feeling of duty fulfilled ran through his body.
“You generate expectations about the countries that you want to love you”he says between laughs BioBioChilewithout disguising the cultural affinity that unites it to the country.
The interest of the public in Santiago was such that a second date was quickly organized, scheduled at the same venue but a week later, the October 24th. As of the closing of this publication, the last tickets were still available.
“The truth is that when we announced the date in Santiago it was a bit to see what would happen, because on the networks they told us: Silvana come to Chile, to Santiago, Valparaíso. I don’t know Chile, and obviously there are people who wanted to listen to me but I didn’t know how many,” summarizes the 26-year-old Mexican, today nominated again for the Latin Grammy with “Si Me Matan”, in the category “Best song by author (a )”.
The milestone, for Estrada, is special. “I feel that I have a very strong connection with Chile, in many ways, from literature, music, history, and it was exciting for me to know that Chile wanted me back. I really wanted to go and generate that interaction,” she admits.
Part of this local and continental boom is explained in “Withered” (2022), her praised first studio album where, accompanied only by a four-piece, she shapes pop songs reminiscent of folklore and roots music. The album earned him praise and feverish labels. “Millenial Chavela Vargas”they told her in Spain, and the provocation still makes the author uncomfortable.
“The new Chavela Vargas, they also told me… I have been careful not to take anything seriously, because I continue to learn and grow. The person they are congratulating for Marchita is not the same person I am now. Those songs already belong to the people: the concept belongs to the world. “I am calm thinking about what is coming,” she says.
And what is coming is an international tour that will start on October 11 in Uruguay and will end in November in the United States, where you already know about Silvana Estrada. Among her collaborations, despite her short recording career, names such as Aurora, Andrew Bird, Natalia Lafourcade, Devendra Banhart, Jorge Drexler, Gustavo Dudamel, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Chilean Mon Laferte stand out.
Silvana Estrada: “Chile has always been very important to me; “I identify with that naked way of holding songs.”
“I grew up listening to Violeta Parra, Víctor Jara. Chile has always been very important to me; “I identify with that naked way of holding songs,” he says about the Chilean influence that runs through his work.
“I really like literature, and then there is Bolaño. I love Bolaño, he is one of my favorite writers. “I just read Nocturno de Chile,” he says enthusiastically. “Where I feel I have a strong connection is in literature and music. Nicanor Parra, Altazor… It’s like it connected me in a very strong way,” he explains.
(P): Does your predilection for Chile come from your parents?
(R): A little, but don’t think it’s too much. The first big, important text that I understood about Chile, about the history of Chile, was by Violeta Parra, “Run run se fue pal norte”; all those songs that suddenly when you’re little you don’t understand as much. As a teenager, on my own, I said: hey, bastard, these lyrics are great and they are super strong. There I got a lot of Chilean books. My older brother gave me the Nicanor Parra anthology.
(P): The cuatro, which is the key instrument in “Marchita”, is also strongly related to Violeta Parra and Chilean culture, despite its origin…
(R): Marchita has only four; Now I’m playing guitar, but really my first songs were just with the cuatro. It is an instrument that I love; I fell in love as soon as I met him. The cuatro was so generous with me that the first day I started playing I made a song, it was a very organic infatuation too, I think that because I had all these sounds in my head, by Violeta, by Soledad Bravo, Simón Díaz. He had many references to the cuatro without having made the connection of ‘ah, this is what the cuatro sounds like and this is the instrument’. It was like finding a home. Sometimes it happens: you arrive in a country for no reason and say ‘I’m from here’. It happened to me with number four. Then I understood and made the reference of ‘this sounds like home to me because this is what Violeta plays’.
(P): How have you handled the success of Marchita? Do you feel extra pressure considering the labels you have received (“the new Chavela Vargas”)?
(R): I believe that pressure always exists, but it is also true that surviving a successful project, having a healthy head, is a process of understanding that you are not your job. Marchita has done very well, I have worked a lot for it, he has been received with love, but that love has been equivalent to the love I have given him. I sleep peacefully, because even if it had gone badly, I gave everything to that project. I think that being honest and following your own intuition gives you the peace of mind that, whether things go well or badly, you did everything, you left nothing behind. It looks like football, but you left it all on the field. And that has been very important in my process of understanding what Marchita means now.
(P): To what do you attribute the success of ticket sales for your shows in Chile? To Marchita?
(R): To the songs. I feel like I’ve been sharing my music for a while, and the songs from Marchita and my EP Abrazo have been making their way in the Latin American world for a while, and word of mouth has been very important. I have been an artist who has grown a lot organically. I started my career playing in bars, jazz circuits, and I filled theaters and larger venues by word of mouth. I was a mess, I had some of my songs on Soundcloud, then I downloaded them but people have always supported me and organized me in some way. These sold outs in Chile are the result of a lot of work and the connection with those songs. No matter how much good press or awards, if people don’t connect, they don’t connect. I am very clear, I work for people.
(P): Your relationship and care with language and words is notable. Where does this characteristic come from in your songs?
(R): I take great care of the word, I am a very admirer of it. I think I sing so that I’m not ashamed to write (laughs), because I come from a very musical family; It is my way of understanding the world. I am happy with music; It is my link with the world. I think I write with so much admiration and respect, because I have lived so much through books, that in the end I find that I have to sing to be able to write freely. Literature has given me experiences that I would not be able to experience otherwise. People sometimes tell me ‘oh, your lyrics are very mature’, and I wrote Marchita between 19 and 20 years old. I always think about where this idea comes from that what I do is mature, and I think it comes from what literature has given me: that ability to be able to rename things, which is not little and is not minor. That’s what we, standing people, really need: to name what happens to us. I enjoy it a lot, I read a lot, and I’m always looking for topics.
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