Natalia Lafourcade, the most awarded artist in the last edition of the Latin Grammy Awards, is recognized “in a creative streak” that began with her homage to Agustín Lara and who lives these days another episode with an incursion into the great Latin American masters that has been both musical and spiritual.
“Singing Violeta Parra demands to be honest, real and humble. There was no way to do it if I did not strip the soul and the heart, at the service of music, not of oneself,” said the artist in Madrid today, enjoyed his first days of vacation in a long time in relative anonymity.
He returns to the activity to talk about “Muses” (Sony Music), his seventh studio album and the first from the award-winning “Hasta la root” (2015), after making his own songs by inspiring authors such as Violeta Parra and -de new – Agustín Lara, but also of Roberto Cantoral, Simón Díaz, Gustavo Guerrero or David Aguilar.
“We had a very clear objective: to make a warm record that sounded like wood and that reconnected us with moments of humanity, not with the impersonal and the immediacy of these times, perhaps a family meal, a wine shared with the couple or the lullaby of a mother to her baby, “he explains.
On tour, Lafourcade (Mexico City, 1984) tells us that a time came when he missed “bohemia at home”.
“It was great to go from one place to another to play my songs and to be in touch with the audience, but I would come home and feel the urge to learn other music,” he says.
One day, trying to “lower” the emotions of the day, he punched a CD by Chavela Vargas and sank on the sofa in search of “a musical hug.”
So he started this “Musas”, which was not intended as an album, but that soon will have a second part with the rest of the 26 songs that came to record precisely with Los Macorinos, the duo of musicians who accompanied Vargas on his tours since 2006 and until his death.
Together with them he discovered that this approach to the past was also “a challenge”, that of the confluence of both universes. For this, Lafourcade had to find its calm, adapt the rhythm and lower the volume, “without shields, only guitars and voice”.
“On the way I began to feel inspired and write my own lyrics. I realized that there was something different in them, that this flirtation with the folklore has strengthened me as a composer and performer,” says this young author who has included five unpublished themes in the first chapter of “Muses”.
At her side, in the interpretation of the classic “Tú me acostumbraste”, appears Omara Portuondo, who traveled from Cuba to the hill of Mexico where the album was recorded to collaborate.
“I wanted a living, present and energetic muse and I thought of her, who is a woman I have admired for a long time and who has contributed to the musical history of the world,” he explains.
He also recently recorded a new version of his song “Beautiful Mexicana” with his compatriot Carlos Rivera, “a talented guy” to which he feels he is joined by “a similar search, that of weaving his own world with pop and folklore.”
“Take it back and mix it up with what we have now, something that brings us closer to the spirit, to the earth,” insists Lafourcade, who feels at ease with the term “root pop” as a form of denominate these incursions.
It is unknown yet the date of release of the second volume of “Musas” with Los Macorinos, who could accompany it in the concerts that will be offered next February in Spain, specifically on the 15th in the Apollo room in Barcelona and the 16th in La Riviera of Madrid.
