SHOW REPORT
Natalia Lafourcade @ Teatro Vorterix, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Show Date: Nomberber 25th, 2015
When an album joins you throughout a whole year, it crosses through different weathers and moods, you redefine it several times, it resonates with you in new ways it didn’t in the first listen and, by the end of the year, there are no secrets left in between you two. That’s how I feel about Natalia Lafourcade’s Hasta la raíz and that’s why it’s maybe suitable to say that I didn’t buy tickets to see her live, but to listen to Hasta la raíz being played live, because the truth is that my knowledge of her previous material was almost non – but that is already changing. It was therefore extremely gratifying that the setlist was focused on Hasta la raíz – she actually played every single one of the tracks!
Natalia Lafourcade appeared onstage alone with her guitar to first delight us with a solo performance of “Para qué sufrir”. Her voice – sweet, nostalgic and piercing, all at the same time – was joined by an eager and numerous audience. “Para qué sufrir” is a pensive and taciturn song which both portrays the refusal to face the end –“Why let everything die, if what was in between you and I made us see everything so beautiful?”— but rationally accepts it at the same time – “You had to seek yourself/ I had to save myself”. It’s a song that wants to save what was built, but recognizes its inevitable destruction.
“Para qué sufrir” was followed by “Vámonos negrito”, and suddenly, melancholy was replaced by smiles and dancing. The whole band joined her and a warm beat filled the venue. And I wondered, is it possible to be the same to the one you were before the storm? But maybe “Vámonos negrito” was the right song to settle the mood of the show: it’s true that the storm is already over, but that doesn’t mean it was forgotten. “I have so much history to release like doves” she sings and in her voice you can feel both the burden of her past, but also hopes in the future.
“I can feel you energy”, she repeated us several times. Maybe Hasta la raíz isn’t the kind of album one may expect to be received with such extroverted enthusiasm, but it contains a sense of liberation – as if all the enclosed emotions burst out to the outside world through the vocals. How not to sing along to the final “oh”s of the title track? Instead of tears rolling out, there was a cascade of voices joined together and each of them added a different story – as she said before playing it, “Hasta la raíz” has transcended herself.
After playing tracks from Hasta la raíz, she played several songs from her previous albums, especially from Mujer divina, the tribute album to Agustín Lara. The love ballads by Agustín Lara fit the mood of Hasta la raíz, but her performance of “Ella es bonita” truly surprised me. In my mind, the twee Natalia from Hu Hu Hu (2009) was the opposite to the new one, more somber and quiet. Seeing her so relaxed, finding pleasure in her own music made me understand that after the pain, you can still smile. That doesn’t mean that the tracks from Hasta la raíz weren’t played with sincerity: the desperate surrender of “Palomas blancas” was heartbreaking, while the harshness of “Ya no te puedo querer” reflected her inner sorrow – but her playfully resented attitude in “Nunca es suficiente” was also one of the best moments of the night.
In the encore, she invited Kevin Johansen – a popular Argentine singer-songwriter – onstage to play together “La fugitiva”, another cover of Agustín Lara. Chemistry is not enough to describe what was in between them; Kevin Johansen’s deeply deep (yes, double deep) voice is both sensual but portrays an absorbed attitude, while Natalia Lafourcade higher register added a lighter tone. Having laughed with their previous banter and having seen her so joyful too, I wasn’t ready for the ending that followed.
“Estoy lista” is one of my favorite songs of 2015 and one that has emotionally touched me. In the narration of Hasta la raíz, it approaches the hardest step of the heartbreak. Saying “I’m ready” is a liberation, but a hurtful one – since now that the storm has passed and you have detached from all of it, you find yourself alone. Although Natalia Lafourcade was surrounded by a whole band, to me she was by herself sitting at the piano and I abstracted from the crowd too. “Let time in its moment/ carry me flying endlessly”, she sings and that’s what her music did that night. I’ve detached already, and still, when she finished playing “Estoy lista” and I came back to the concrete reality, I was confused and I found a slight disturbance in myself.
But only that night I fully realized that the last track on Hasta la raíz isn’t “Estoy lista”, but “No más llorar”. She introduced the last song on the record not associating it to relationships but to all the disasters that’s been going on around the world in these days, telling us that it’s time to stop hurting and time to stop crying. I never listened to “No más llorar” as a social song, but once again I learnt that songs don’t need to have only one meaning. However, with albums bonded to a period of life, I wonder how you can listen to them once the emotions have passed. I won’t be feeling the same in a couple of years. Will I still feel these songs as I did that night or will it be all left cold in the past?
Maybe there is a reason why the album is called “hasta la raíz”, which means “to the roots”. But “hasta” isn’t only “to”, but also “as far as”. There is therefore the idea of reaching and discovering the most intimate side, the core. When she sings in the title track “I carry you inside, to the root/ and even if it grows/ you’ll be here”, maybe it doesn’t speak only of the person, but of everything surrounding that period of life– the feelings, moods, thoughts, ambiences and stories. 2015 gave me lots of meanings for Hasta la raíz, but I know I’ll find new ones too. And all of them will be valid and all of them will resonate with me. These songs will still caress me, they will remind me of who I was in 2015 and of the time I was standing alone – I needed to go alone – and hear Natalia telling me to stop crying: it doesn’t matter why – either a heartbreak, desolation, social disasters, low self-esteem or discussions – but no more crying. No more crying. No more crying. No more crying.
In Buenos Aires, the cold weather lasted this year more than what it should. When a warmer day arrived, we soon had to take out our boots and coats again. And so did my blue mood. Now that the dresses and sunglasses are all over the streets, I couldn’t have found better words to fit the beginning of summer than “I’m defrosting this winter I keep in me, for no more crying”. Yes, maybe there is one thing I know; that I carry this show to the root.
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This was a very meaningful concert to me and I tried to be as open as I could – sometimes it’s hard when you know you’ll...
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