Natalia Lafourcade: “Sometimes the industry is really tough, it plays you crooked.”

Play, authenticity, walking the path that belongs to you... and a hint of midlife crisis. Natalia Lafourcade's Cancionera Tour arrives tonight at the Cap Roig Festival, with the singer-songwriter with the most Latin Grammys winning, facing the audience with only her guitar and voice on a sonic journey where tradition, the sounds that have shaped her, and the contemporary intertwine. The journey of Lafourcade's (Mexico City, 1984) new album, Cancionera, is both intimate and playful, with collaborations with the Gutiérrez Brothers and Israel Fernández.

An album, she says, recorded the old-fashioned way, “in three weeks, the studio was like a creative laboratory, we made all the videos, the music, there were about eighty of us... and we had to achieve the intimacy of the music. Before, a project like this would have been very invasive for me, but this one pushed me to do it this way and invite everyone around us to become children again. This project has that authentic inner child quality. And of embracing myself as a songwriter: I want to continue doing this, but through play,” Lafourcade assures.

This project has that authentic inner child thing”

And she says that the new album “has a lot of Mexico, of playfulness, of double meanings, but there's also depth, my many faces, masks, and facets. What I've let people see of me, and what I hadn't let them see, I bring to light.” With songs like Amor clandestino (Clandestine Love) or Como quisiera quererte (How I Want to Love You), Cancionera (Songbook), she explains, “I see it as those quiet spaces of my personality that came to light and as a set of messenger songs that came to remind me of important things as I entered my forties. And as a tribute to songbooks that have inspired me by reminding me that song is a little bit of everything: companion, friend, medicine, teacher. It scolds you, it loves you, it hugs you, it does everything to you.”

On the album, she plays with an alter ego, Cancionera, who "makes me erase the character of Natalia Lafourcade to allow other nuances to emerge, like a mysterious elf who had to appear at this point in my life to tell me some secrets and keep me on the path." A dual songbook. "There's La Roja, a part of my ethereal, romantic, dreamy personality, stuck in the past. And La Negra, more Chavela-esque, masculine, earthy, like a bull, very clumsy, rude, into parties, nights, and alcohol." Behind her, she acknowledges, lurk people like José Alfredo Jiménez, Chavela Vargas, and Violeta Parra.

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Despite everything, she demystifies the midlife crisis: “Like everyone, I go through crises and come out of them again and again. For me, it's very natural. It always happens. Entering my forties has been a beautiful thing, one of much reflection. The most valuable thing is managing to maintain the purity of authenticity: remembering that I'm walking a path that belongs to me before anyone else, and that I have the opportunity to design it however I want.” And she admits that “sometimes the industry is really tough; it plays you crooked. But as I enter this decade, I've been able to appreciate a lot; you clean out your closet.” And she asserts that “you have to know how to deal with fame, make it your friend, or it will drive you to hell. Between fame and no fame, you're stuck and can't connect with authenticity. Be true. With whatever you're going through. And don't beat yourself up too much. Have the courage to live.”