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A
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B
From NPR Music, this is Aunt Latino. I'm Felix Contreras.
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C
And I'm Ana Maria Sayer. Let the chisme begin and the cheesemade today. Felix, at long last, this is I don't how do I, how do I describe the level of excitement we brought in Silvana Estrada to do a real life in our office Tiny Desk?
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B
Okay, Anna. Yes, it is a very, very special day. Silvana's Tiny Desk concert just came out, and it's the last one in our 2025 El Tiny series. And that's the music you're hearing right now. It's a stunning performance. And even better is that we got a chance to talk to Silvana after the concert. So for today's episode, we're gonna play that extended conversation. But first, I'll introduce people to Silvana Estrada. If by chance they don't know who we're talking about.
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C
Silvana Estrada, if by chance they don't know who we're talking about because I have brought her many times on this show is a singer songwriter from Veracruz, Mexico. The way I would describe her voice is it's one of those things where you hear it once and you truly never forget it. Her music is deeply emotional and also personal and also political. She's one of the few artists out of Mexico right now I know of who's talking about actual realized political issues, pains things that most of the time people aren't super excited or ready to talk about in the music. And she does it. I'm a huge admirer of her. I'm also a dear friend of hers, and it means the world to me to have her come play a Tiny desk for us.
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B
I think that once people hear this interview, it'll be pretty clear that you guys are very good friends. You guys have almost this unspoken connection and finishing each other's thoughts. And we need to explain that that happens sometimes when we interview people. It's sometimes our interests and backgrounds align with the artists that we cover and we establish this bond. I know I've done it with a few artists over the years, so it's very, very fun to be part of that with you and Sylvana.
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C
Well, and the note I will say about her is that the first time I brought her on the show was five years ago. She was one of the first artists I brought on the show, One of the first artists I really connected with while doing this work. And so, in a way, like we talk about this a lot. She was starting her music career right around when I was starting here, and we kind of grew up together. And there is a thing about you find someone's art and you connect so deeply with it. And there's a reason for it because they share a feeling or a way of thinking or a sense of spirit with you. And so I think that's a lot of what's happened with us over the years. We run into each other and coincide and all of these things. And I've gotten to interview her on a million different stages, which is always a joy. So it's been years like this and.
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B
Now we're catching her at a very pivotal point. It's the presentation of her second album. It's called Vendran Suaves Juaz out October 17th. And this is after a very, very strong first album. You know, this is kind of a make or break moment because a lot of artists, they put out a very strong first album and they've had their whole lives to work on it, and then in a matter of a couple years, they have to put out a second record. So the pressure's on. So if that artistry isn't there, there may not be success after that. That's not the case with Sylvana Estralla. This record is very, very strong. It's a nice follow up and that's what we talked about.
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C
So Felix, let's jump into it. We started by talking about the new album and what's been going on since her last album came out, which was five years ago. Check it out. So you have a new album coming out? Yes, that. I think I may be more excited for this album to come out than you are actually.
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D
Maybe.
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C
And it took you five years.
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D
Yeah, maybe. You know, five years, you know, dreaming with this album and three years of, you know, actually struggling with a bunch of like limitations in my head and trying to, you know, fighting this, like bloque and Como que si como bloqueo creativo and this album. Bendran Suaves Juvias. I, at some point I decided to self produce this album and that's one of the best decisions in my life. But also that took me like a year to understand like how I wanted to do it, how I wanted to be being this figure of the producer and how can I allow myself to be me to be in the sisa to be soft, to be sweet, in this kind of position that we all have in our minds that the producer is this probably in your head. If I say producer, it's going to be un hombre, you know, a man in charge like this fast thinker, never hesitator. And I'm all the opposite. So, yeah, it took me a while to like, allowed myself to be me. Yeah.
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B
And it's, it's. You face the common problem that I think every artist faces when they're making records. You live your whole life and then it comes out in the first record and the second record. You have a year or two to live your life, to get all those experiences and write in. Like. Was that for you? Same thing?
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D
Yeah, same thing. I was putting a lot of pressure in myself because as you're exactly what I released Marchita and it was my first album and nobody was expecting anything. I wasn't expecting anything. Like all the songs from Marchita are the songs I did at my parents house playing the Cuatro. Didn't even thought of like, oh, this is gonna be an album. I was just doing it for fun and trying to understand my life and my feelings. And then the second album was a little bit more like, okay, I need to do this. I really need to do this. And I have all these people who work with me and I want them to be proud and I want to be proud myself and I want to do something. And then all these really stupid things, you know, that these rules that people put in your head, like, you cannot repeat yourself, you need to change, but also you need to be yourself. But also this has to be successful, whatever that means. And also you have to be happy and enjoy the process. So there was so much pressure in so many ways that, yeah, the second album definitely took me a while to clean my mind from all this and my heart, especially my heart to clean all of this, you know, ideas and rules and. Come on.
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C
But there is a balance even. You know, one of the things that I'm so proud of you for, for this record is that you, you took, you know, you. You took ownership of your creativity. You produced the thing yourself. You stood by your intuition, your gut, which is very hard to do, especially as a woman, especially Mexicana. See, especially for, you know, only your second album, because it is only your second. Al pero ademas. One of the things we were talking about the other night is you were like, you know, I produced it, maybe I should learn how to engineer it too. And I was like, aguas Amiga. You know, because it is that balance of realizing you can own this.
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D
Yeah.
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C
And realizing it's your world and it's your art and it's your music.
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D
Yeah.
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C
But also being like, when do you accept the support and accept the help and accept that it won't be the most perfect thing you've ever done. You'll never do anything perfect. Like, where was that balance for you?
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D
You know, what changed my life completely is that during this process, my best friend died. He and his little brother, they were murdered. So I. That changed my perception of, you know, life and everything. That changed me a lot. And, you know, that was very, very, very hard. And it's a daily struggle to me to realize that they're not physically here anymore. And that was devastating. But I think from that devastation, I kind of get to, you know, reconstruct my idea of perfection, you know, or almost like that destroyed my idea of perfection. No, I get to understand, like, wow, life and nature is wild. We are wild. And even if that kind of destroyed my heart, allowed me also to make peace with the idea of we are here just for a second. Like, we don't know when are we going to leave this world. And so you better enjoy it or you better do something, or you better, you know, choose your fight. And I think took me also a while to, like, get better and recover from this heart breaking, broken. But then when I started to feel better, I was like, okay, now that I know that this is going to be a minute, now that I know that this is not going to be perfect, now that I know that I'm nothing compared to the force of nature. I just want to be humble and try to do what I can, which is, you know, it's what I can. It's unique. I don't know if it's good or bad, but it's what is in my heart, so I need to do it.
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B
After you went through that, did you ever think about, okay, I can't make any more music?
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D
Oh, yeah. And that was terrifying. That was. I don't wish this to anybody, but compared to death, music can be so small. Everything compared to death, it's so very small. And at the same time, it's so powerful, you know, because you get to see your death. People through art, you get to feel them, you get to understand them. You get to know them better and better every time, even if they're gone. So. But yeah, I remember I was so. I was really struggling with, you know, my sadness and I guess my depression and also with all this pressure of making a new album and to be, you know, good and keep working. And I never stop touring and a bunch of stuff. And I. At some point I was like, maybe this is not for me anymore. Maybe I. I can't. But then also, I never stopped because I love it. Because in my core, I think I do music because it's a. It's simple, It's a nice thing to do rather than, you know, don't do anything. So I guess I never stopped because something really deep in my heart was like, keep going, keep singing, like, it's going to be fine. And, yeah, I think I connect music, like, in my mind, musica y esperanza. No, like, music and hope are so, like, together that I couldn't just leave music because I want to be hopeful for this world, you know?
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C
When I listened to your first record, Margita, the thing that struck me the most was how essentially Mexican it felt to me. I've talked about that a lot, how you are able to so effectively bring in death, withering, literally, and also the beauty and the joy of life. And to me, a lot of that has to do with. With your proximity to nature and to the earth and to all. You're such a grounded person. This second record, and I said this to you the first time I heard it, I was like, pero, Silvana, this record is you. It's so essentially you, because it takes all of the things of that first record of the death, and then the beauty and the intensity and the pain. And then there's joy and there's dancing because Silvana is. She's out. Let's all be real. But you're light and you're happy and we're always laughing. And then that's what I think of when I think of you as you. That your essence is that. And now that you're saying all these things about the way you came back to music, it feels like you could only come back to music not as a concept, but as a vehicle for really, like, you embraced death, you worked through it, and then you found joy.
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D
Yeah, yeah, I. You know, there's this moment of grieving where, you know, joy feels like it's super far away and it's never going to be back. But the moment that is back again, you're like, oh, my God, I've been missing you so much. I don't know. I have this now, this relationship with joyfulness y como diversion and, like, just laugh. And I. Now I'm grateful. I don't. I don't take it for granted anymore. And I think that it's super healing. And also I think death has this thing which is very Mexican, but death is always like this teacher of, hey, remember, this is you. Like, you see this muger blanca, that it's coming for you. This is you. No. So I think, you know, I miss myself very much when my friend was alive. I miss how my heart was super light. And I'm grateful because I actually had the opportunity to be a child for many, many, many years. But at the same time, now I can say I'm grateful because, you know, I'm able to laugh, I'm able to talk with you, and it's super healing just to be awake, just to love life better and more. I think it's, you know, and also I think that's gonna save the world, you know, to actually fall in love with life again and defend the lives that are in danger right now. And, yeah, to defend this beautiful house that we have, this planet Earth. And I think death, to be close to death, teaches you gratitude and also to defend what you love and to love better.
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B
I think people who are not Mexicano are not familiar with that closeness to death. They don't understand. I think it gets misinterpreted. And the one thing I remember, I learned years ago from this guy, like, he was a Mexicano bailador. He was a shaman. He said, okay. And the pre Columbian idea, the philosophy is, I am alive, I am dead, but in both cases, I am. And I think that gets the essence of everything that we're talking about. And so many people talk about it when it comes to Mexican music or Mexican culture, then that's. We're really like. We're deep in it right now about that whole thing, but that's who we are.
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D
Yeah. And no. And death is so real. This time of, you know, this period of the world and so much injustice is happening. And I think. I think we need to. I mean, of course we need to talk about, you know, specific things, but the fact that we are kind of disconnecting ourselves with the reality of death is also disconnecting us from the reality of life. So to me, we really need to bring that Mexicano that we have, all of us, and to realize that, you know, life is sacred and we are here for a second. And yeah, we need to connect with death. It's okay if we fear death, but we need to see her through the eyes. Because if not, we're asleep. We're going through this world and we're asleep, and we're not conscious and if we're asleep, we will never know if we are alive or dead. So we're basically failing to the only como primer mandamiento de no Estrada que estar deep.
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B
Okay, Anna, that was the first half of our conversation with Silva Estrada. We want to hear a little bit more of her Tiny desk because she played a bunch of songs from her new album that we've been talking about. What track is on your mind?
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C
Okay, Felix. So you know how I am. I get a little emotional sometimes. And when Silvana first showed me this album, it was March of this year. So this is very also very exciting to me because I've been like, just wait until everyone gets to hear this masterpiece. And I showed up to a label session where she was showing a few people there. No one in the room spoke Spanish, Felix, pretty much, except me and obviously Silvana and her manager. And so at a certain point they called on me to start translating the songs. As we went through this album, I was like, well, she's saying that she laments that she ever knew you and that you, like, have torn her into pieces. Whatever. We get to the last song called Alma Mia, which thank God she played at the Tiny Desk. I said, if you're gonna come, you have to play this song. It is the slowest, saddest, most heartbreaking song in the world. It's just painstakingly laid bare these really simple lyrics, but really, really, really hit you in the heart. And I was in the corner literally sobbing and no one else in the room understands the words to this song and I'm losing it. So I have to play it now. Here's Alma Mia at the Tiny Desk.
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B
That was a bit of Alma Mia from Sivlana Estrada's Tiny Desk concert. We're going to take a quick break to compose ourselves and we'll be right back.
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A
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E
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B
And we're going to jump back into our conversation with Silvan Estrada after her Tiny Desk performance, but we gotta play a little bit of a song on her new album that we talk a lot about in the next section. It's called Good Luck, Good Night. So here's a little bit of Silvana and her band performing that at the Tiny Desk.
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C
That was Ilana Estrada performing Good Luck, Good Night at the Tiny Desk. Let's jump back into our conversation with her where Felix asks her about how she came up with the sound of this song and how she was inspired by the Canadian American singer Laza de Sela.
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B
One of the songs that you play today, and it's on the record, it's we were discussing if we couldn't tell if it was a New Orleans second line groove or like a corrido borracho. Like a drunken corrido, you know, like what tell us about that song. And, and like where did you find that groove?
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D
I was actually listening to Laza de Sela and I was, you know, trying to learn her songs from the Laza album, the one that has her face. And I don't remember which exact song but I, I don't know, there was something super dark and like super like, I don't know, something very like dark and strong energetically and I get super inspired by that. And actually at that time I was struggling with this. I had a. On desen quentro amoroso actually with a friend of mine. He kind of ghosted me for years. And I was. So I was pieced. And, yeah, I was. I started this song, and I remember I did the first verses, and then, yeah, I did the whole song. And then I went actually with Natalia. Natalia. And I showed this song to her, and she was like, this is great, but you should, you know, do it a little bit longer, the entrance. So that's why I started, like. And then the song, and she was like, that's so Juan Gabriel. I love it.
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B
Do it.
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D
And so I did. And, yeah, she's awesome. She always helped me. And then the groove and the production and the energy. I was very inspired by Lhasa, very inspired by Dumb Waits. I wanted to this song to be kind of, you know, full of like, lobo in English.
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B
Mud.
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D
Mud. Like mud.
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B
You answered. How do you say it in English? And you answered in Spanish.
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C
That's always. That's always with. She's been translating for me into English all day. I'm like, wait, this is backwards.
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D
So, yeah, I tried to do this. And actually, this is the song that kind of brought me to Montreal and to. Because this song and many others of the album, I record them in Montreal. It's a crazy story, because I was listening to Lassa, and then I started this song. I choose that. My inspiration was going to be Laza, Tom Waits, even, you know, but also Chavela. You know, Chavela Vargas, and also Juan Gabriel. You know, it was a. But it was. It was a bunch of heroes.
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B
Very quickly. For people who don't know, explain who Laza de Cello was just very quickly.
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D
So it's a singer, songwriter, performer, magician, who did a career in Montreal. But I think she lived in Mexico. Her parents were Mexican dad, American mother. And then at some point, they moved to Montreal. And so basically, Lassa is like this amazing voice who kind of transformed. It's like, to listen to Lassa, it's like wearing these glasses where you can see. See darkness as it is, because when it's dark, you cannot see. But listening to Lhasa, it's like you actually get to see darkness, see through darkness. It's like a dark light. It's like a black light. So then you get to understand a bunch of what is going on in the dark places of your heart. Lhasa is like this, you know, kind of window to a really dark but beautiful place. And I think that's. Yeah, Lassa, it's like a. Yeah, a big inspiration. I love her. I never met her, but I. Yeah, I'm. I love her. I hope we can meet in the afterlife. Yes.
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B
She unfortunately passed away way too soon. And when you mention her name to people, it's like a secret handshake. It's like, not everybody knows. Right. But if you know her music, you know her music and you're very, very touched by it.
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D
Yeah. And then after doing this song, Laza's brother, Misha, Misha Karam, he sends an email to my manager. He was like, hey, we're gonna do like this tribute to Laza. And we wanted to invite Silvana because we saw on TikTok that she's always singing Laza de Sela songs. And I was really in a. I was down. I was in a really, really dark moment of my process. And Edwin, my manager, he was kind of desperate, so he asked immediately, he asked Misha, like, Silvana can go there maybe and record with the musicians. I think that will make her super, you know, super happy. Because some of these musicians are actually. Were actually in this album that I told you of, Lassa. They were the same kind of. So I went to Montreal, like a month after that. I went to Montreal with all this group of people that I didn't know before just to rehearse, like, in a house in the middle of the woods, like next to a lake. And I think that time I kind of started to be happy again. I guess that's a moment where I. Thanks to this song, actually I started to. To feel like a kid again, you know, and it kind of. Because I started to laugh at my. At my drama. Like, this song kind of allowed me to laugh at my infinite, endless drama. So, yeah, it's a. This song also. Sometimes I feel like it's also like an invocation, but. Invocation? Invocation of all these, like, ghosts of. Of mine. No, including, you know, Lassa and like all this Huanga, all these kind of ancestors or like, people that really made me build, like, my own heart and my own way of looking know, to the world. So the.
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B
The record's coming out. So what are you going to tour? What's going to happen? Let's just talk. Let's talk regular stuff first. Regular stuff.
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C
I'm like, she's on tour long. So stupid. I'm like, when can we hang out?
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D
Yeah, I'm starting to tour now after, you know, I have this week of promo here in the Los Estal Unidos. And then I'm going to Madrid and I'm doing this show in La Plaza Mayor, and then I'm coming back to the U.S. and I start in November, like, this U.S. tour, and then U.S. and Canada, and then I'm doing Mexico and Latino America. And I'm just. I. I'm so excited because I'm gonna be playing the new album. I'm gonna be playing the new songs. And. Yeah, I'm just. I'm thrilled to think that, you know, people's gonna be singing back all these songs and, like. Yeah, I think it's gonna be super fun. And I' planning this for so many years that I'm just. Yeah. Really grateful and excited.
- [33:29]
B
So a quick question, because we just saw you perform here at the tiny desk, and I've seen you a bunch of times already. When you perform, it reminds me of, like, something. I think I may have even mentioned this to you once. It's like, when I would see, like, you interpret the songs, your songs or other people's songs, and it becomes. That song interpretation reminds me of people like Ella Fitzgerald when I saw her perform, like, all of these great vocalists who, like, they lose themselves in the music. And you did it. You do it constantly. You did it here today. Like, how do you do that every night, man? Because it's so deep. It's so emotional.
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C
Thinking about going on tour?
- [34:09]
B
No, I mean, just, like, how do you, like, find that every. Every performance, I mean, does.
- [34:14]
D
Yeah.
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B
You know what I mean?
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D
Yeah. Again, I think it's. I do it because it's fun to say something, but it's also, you know, deep and kind of magical. And it's just addictive to go down and feel this, like, witch going up and, like, you know, all the magic that a song can, like, have inside, just try to find it. And I think, yeah, it's just fun. And I feel like if I don't do it, I would be pretty. I would read that, you know, I'll be like, oh, a tour again or a show again. So, yeah, so it's kind of. And I understand. The question is sometimes I'm really tired. I'm extremely tired. And in the past, I've had troubles with that. But, yeah, I think if I don't do it, I don't know, I get bored and I need to kind of, you know, call the witch somehow.
- [35:20]
C
Ask you again. This. Like, you say that now.
- [35:42]
B
We've been doing Latino for 15 years, and some artists, we have these ongoing conversations. Like, we start years ago, and then we keep going and we change the artist change. This is one of those conversations. So we're just going to keep talking. Maybe somewhere down the road we'll stand in front of microphones and we'll do it again. So thank you for coming.
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D
Thank you. Thank you, Felix, for this. It's my pleasure, always. I love it.
- [36:12]
E
Moto.
- [36:17]
D
Miedo Ana.
- [36:20]
B
I can't encourage our listeners enough to go check out this Tiny Desk concert. It really is something, and it was a lot of fun and very insightful talking to her after her tiny desk.
- [36:29]
C
Felix, I'm so glad you loved it almost as much as I did.
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B
I don't think I could ever come close. You have been listening to Old Latino from NPR Music. Our audio editor is Noah Caldwell.
- [36:56]
C
The executive producer of NPR Music is Saraya Mohammed.
- [37:00]
B
Sonali Mehta is executive director of NPR Music, and we welcome her to our team.
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D
Yay.
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B
I'm Felix Contreras.
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C
And I'm Ana Maria Sayer.
- [37:07]
B
Thank you for listening.
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E
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A
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- [38:48]
E
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