On navigating chaos by being kind to yourself

Your parents are luthiers, so you grew up not just listening to music but watching musicians work with instruments. How did that immersive experience shape your approach to music?

It was really special for me to grow up surrounded by musicians because the relationship with the craft of playing an instrument and studying a specific style of music is truly beautiful to witness. It’s such a deep and beautiful commitment to art. And it has a lot to do with this inner child we all have inside. One of my favorite memories is to see these old guys from the orchestra trying out their brand new instruments from my parents’ atelier and suddenly they were playing their violins and even if they were 50 or 60 at that time of just listening to the first notes of the new violin, or the new viola or bass or cello, they were immediately children again. And I fell in love with this idea of connecting with whatever magic music has, and I always keep an eye on my inner child. And I have that clarity since very young because of my parents and because I grew up surrounded by musicians.

You have such a rich vocabulary in all your songs. What’s your relationship with other art forms, like literature or art, or reading? How do other disciplines also impact you as an artist?

I definitely have a really strong connection with literature. Since I was a baby when I started to fall in love with books, especially poetry. I think I was 10 when I started to read and write poetry. And just as with music, there were some moments of some poems where I could feel something in my body happening. My heart was opening to something quite indescribable, but really special. And the same thing happens to me with music. So I think that’s why I do songs, because it’s my way of actually doing both things that connect me with grace and deep beauty and really concrete emotions, but also I feel like I get inspired by a bunch of things. I really like contemporary dance and theater. I love to be on stage. That’s my favorite thing on earth. So I really enjoy going to any type of theatrical performance.

How did you become so comfortable with being on stage?

I was 13 and I did, well, first I started singing in choirs, which was really nice. And I need to thank my parents because they always took the time to drive me really far from home so I could take the classes and be in the chorus. And so yeah, I started singing in choruses, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a choir, but it’s really beautiful. It’s like you are part of something insane. You’re part of a vibrational harmony, and you get to construct a beautiful community through basically harmony, which is quite insane if you think of it.

I’ve always loved singing in choirs and the connection between the audience and the artist. When I was a baby, my parents would put me on the table, and then they would play and sing with me. So when I was young, I thought, “Hey, my family smiles every time I sing, so maybe I have something to say to the world.” That connection with the audience—it’s a really deep love that I have.

You have been performing live since you were a teenager. What do you think you have learned most important about handling an audience and keeping the energy?

I think to be honest and to be transparent, and vulnerable. I think what I love the most about my shows is that they feel like a safe space. I feel so safe and so loved. And I try to create the same thing for the audience, to make everybody in the audience feel free and seen and loved. And I think we together create this safe space where we can all cry, connect with our hearts, with our feelings, and especially what I love about, or what I’ve been learning from so many years of performing, it’s this infinite form of their energy. It’s my energy and my energy, it’s their energy. So it never stops. And that’s beautiful. And it’s a never-ending love story.

Marchita was your debut solo album, and it was very well-received. You toured internationally, received excellent reviews, and won a Latin Grammy. Was there any pressure or expectations to release your second album?

Yeah, I put a lot of pressure on myself for sure. You have your whole life to do your first album, but then you have a couple of years to do the second. And I guess I put a lot of pressure on myself all the time, and actually, it was really exhausting for me to have such high expectations. I think it’s normal. Also, the industry always makes you feel like you cannot repeat yourself. You need to do better, you need to stay yourself, but you need to change.

And you need to be magically reborn every time you do an album and have something different. There’s this idea that if you’re going to do another album, there are these check marks that the industry has now. It needs to be different. It needs to be brand new, but it also needs to feel super natural. Just being a woman sometimes also feels impossible. It’s like you need to be quiet, but smart, but pretty, but not too pretty, but skinny, but not skinny. Sometimes I feel like being a woman doing music is a little bit like that. It’s like you need to be so many things that, at some point, it’s impossible and exhausting.

I think of what you just said, that you have to be a new persona or something different with each new project, but that doesn’t apply so much to men. But with women musicians, they always have to reinvent themselves.

Yeah, exactly. And what’s really strange is that if you’re a woman, you also need to be completely grateful, and you cannot suffer. And if you suffer, just don’t talk about it because society already allowed you to be an artist, so you should be just thankful and happy. I saw all these interviews of men talking about their super dark processes—Bob Dylan saying, “Yeah, when I did this album, I hated every part of it.” I spoke with male friends, and they were like, “Yeah, I also had difficult processes and tough times in the studio.” And then I started searching for interviews with Björk or other major female artists. And they were all like, “I enjoyed every part of the process.” Maybe it’s true, but I suspect female artists aren’t allowed to say that sometimes they don’t enjoy every single part of the process. When I was making this album, it was also really hard for me.

When I was doing this new album, the new one, Vendrán Suaves Lluvias, I was suffering so much the first part of it because all of the expectations and all of the pressure, and I was not able to find the right sound, and it’s when I decided to produce it myself and to produce an album also, it’s a bunch of pain because you need to take all these decisions every single day. I was having a rough time, and on top of it, I feel absolutely guilty because I was not enjoying it as much as I thought I would. Sometimes I also feel like being a woman in this industry has different measurements. I think I’ve been working out just trying to find a really humanly possible idea of success, which is to stay healthy, stay happy, and love what I do. And that’s it.

You mentioned earlier that you decided to self-produce your new album. How did you come up with that decision? And how did you deal with the creative forces of being an artist, but also a producer?

I didn’t initially want to produce this album. It wasn’t even an idea, a possibility. I started to work with a producer, and it didn’t work, and then another, and it didn’t work, and then another, and it didn’t work. And then I felt like, “Hmm, this is so weird. Why is this not working?” And then I realized all these producers are amazing, and I really admire them. I was in such a state of mind, and I really needed to explore and to play and to feel light again, because it was super heavy going to the studio, and the producers were like, “Yeah, we have five days. This day we have two hours for this, three hours for this, da da da.”

It was super rigid and also a bunch of rules, and we cannot use strings again, because then you will repeat yourself. We should change the repertoire because you’re talking about love again, all these rules and agenda, and also their own expectations of what this album should be. Sometimes being a singer-songwriter is hard because I feel like a producer can elevate the song, or they can make the song completely far from who is listening. I was quite desperate. And then I said, “Okay, I’m going to produce this myself.” And it was really hard. It was a lot of fun, and it involved a lot of pain. I struggled because I used to have this idea in my mind of, and I guess we all have this idea of what a producer is, a producer, and everybody thinks of a producer as a man, probably a man, old, genius guy who has all the answers.

And then I was like, “Okay, how can I be a producer and not follow that image? How can I be me during this process of being a producer? How can I say the things I want to say? How can I be transparent with the band? How can I be like, “Hey guys, I really don’t know. What are we going to do today? So let’s explore this idea, but I’m really not sure.” And that took me also a couple of months to actually find a way of being me, a really disorganized person, and it takes a lot of energy for me to make any kind of decision, but also to make an album. Every day was a bunch of learning and a bunch of self-kindness, which sometimes is really hard when you’re a woman. I don’t know if it’s even worse if you’re a Latina woman. But yeah, self-kindness, softness allows you to be actually nice with yourself and not judge all your ideas.

That’s interesting, what you just said about not judging your ideas or disregarding them. Because usually when you’re collaborating, somebody can not guide you, but say, “No, actually it’s good. Keep pushing,”

Or the opposite, you can have an idea and the other guy could be like, “No, that’s not right, let’s do this other thing.” So it’s crazy that when you feel that you’re liberated from that, then you become the guy who will be like, “That’s such a stupid idea, let’s not do it.” So it’s hard. And it’s this thing of how can women have all these positions that are usually held by men and not repeat the male patterns?

You have been touring and performing nonstop. But you had an injury not long ago that forced you to take a pause. What kind of wisdom came out of that break?

It’s crazy because I feel like people are like, “Wow, that must be so hard”. But I loved it. I hated to be injured, but I actually loved to just stay home. When that happened, I mean, of course, I was devastated. I mean, I was in a wheelchair, but I don’t know, it really showed me how important it is to be grounded at an energetic level. I think sometimes we artists work with so much energy, the energy of the audience, and then we take a plane, which is all this energy crossing the sky, and I don’t know.

And then we go to another continent and we try to get the energy of this completely new country or city, or whatever. And somehow we really need to be conscious of words or the real ground. And I think that’s the best learning. How can I ground myself during the tour? Because really, if not, I know that my back it’s going to be injured again because it was a muscle problem that has not gone away, it’s a condition.

You’re about to release your second album, Vendrán Suaves Lluvias. And you’ve been touring, and people are going to invite you to collaborate. For example, I’ve seen you with Helado Negro and with Andrew Bird. I just saw you with Calle Trece at the main square in Mexico City in front of 180,000 people. There are going to be so many invitations and requests. How do you manage all the people who are frequently asking for your attention and time? How do you prioritize what matters, and also prevent burnout and exhaustion?

That question is really hard, but really important to ask. I guess sometimes it’s really what my body allows me to do. I’m trying every day to listen to my body and listen to where my boundaries are, where I’m starting to get tired. And it’s funny now, it’s hard for me sometimes because I received so many requests like, “Hey, do you want to collaborate on this song?” And sometimes these collaborations are with friends that I love. I would love to collaborate, but now I know that a collaboration is likely to go to the studio, and then the promo, and then the video. And it’s not just that—when you’re in the studio, it’s really just starting. So now I’m like, “No, I don’t have the physical time to do it.”

What are you excited about in the future?

I’m really excited about the tour. I’m really excited about touring in the US. I’ve been without touring here in the US for a long time. I’m pretty curious what’s going to happen. I really want to reconnect with all the people who listen to me here, and just travel, and just create the show of Vendrán Suaves Lluvias and start to feel it live. Really beautiful things happen in the tour when we are playing and playing and playing. It’s like you learn how to read your musicians’ minds, and they also read my mind. So I’m really excited to get to that point where we are all hyper-tight and super connected.

What’s something you’ve learned about yourself as an artist that you think is good advice for navigating chaos?

Make sure you’re having a good time. Because if you’re not having a good time, it’s probably not worth it. So always be conscious about it. Am I having a good time or not? And if the answer is not, just think twice. Why are you doing it?