Mexican singer-songwriter Silvana Estrada talks about the intimate, introspective journey that led to her excellent debut, 'Marchita'
after a breakup, and it wasn’t only the breakup and the dissolution of a relationship — I think I was suffering because I realized love wasn’t what I thought it was. It was a kind of pain that was philosophical, sowas an introspective journey that I took to find out what my truth was and my construction of love and why I was feeling so bad.”
Some of the tracks came together quietly around 2018. Estrada would play them at home, completely alone, and later refined them at local performances where she got to know each arrangement inside and out. When it came time to record, she had a deep understanding of what each piece of music required. Her producer Gustavo Guerrero also wanted to honor the closeness of her live shows.
They resisted the impulse to overstuff her melodies. “When you’re in the studio, it’s always difficult to stay minimalistic,” she continues. “You have all this opportunity to play all these instruments. You’re like, ‘A keyboard! An organ! Another section of strings!’ You can do whatever you want, but we kept taking things out.”
Songs like “Tristeza,” with its melancholy center and piercing vocals, reflect Estrada’s myriad influences. “That melody is really specific,” she explains. “It starts really high and then it’s like a cascade, falling, falling, falling. That happens a lot in the music of Simón Díaz and llanera music that inspires me, still, every day.” Other highlights, like “Te Guardo,” are attempts to reimagine folk melodies without losing the album’s spare delicacy.