["Hasta la Raíz" playing]
[Natalia Lafourcade] Every moment that you survive in life
makes you stronger.
It's going to bring something good if I want to see it,
if I want to take it.
["Hasta la Raíz" continues playing]
[audience cheering]
[audience chanting] Natalia! Natalia! Natalia!
[Hirway] Natalia Lafourcade is a singer and songwriter from Veracruz, Mexico.
Since her debut in 2003,
she's become one of the most influential artists in Latin music.
She sang the theme song from the Oscar-winning Pixar film, Coco.
She's won a Grammy and 12 Latin Grammys,
including Record of the Year and Song of the Year for "Hasta la Raíz,"
which means "To the root."
["Hasta la Raíz" playing]
[Hirway] The roots, in this case, extend in two directions:
into Natalia's own past
and the soil and history of where she's from.
["Hasta la Raíz" playing]
[Hirway] I'm Hrishikesh Hirway.
This is Song Exploder.
[intro theme music playing]
-[traditional Mexican music playing] -[man singing in Spanish]
[Natalia in Spanish] I moved to Veracruz when I was two years old.
It was when my parents separated.
That's when my mom decided to move to Coatepec.
[traditional music continues]
Look how yummy.
I want to eat everything.
This just got out of the oven.
This is hot.
This is very bad for you. This is bad.
[in English] I just like it here.
It's simple, and it's familiar.
Life is so cheap here and rich.
[woman speaking Spanish] Want to see pictures
-you left a year ago? -When I came with Dad!
Handsome boy. Look how pretty.
Oh, yes. Here you are with my dad.
The Captain.
The Captain. [laughs]
[Natalia speaking English] My father, who is a musician…
There's actually photos of me playing my father's clavichord
when I was one or two years old.
-["Toccata and Fugue" by Bach playing] -Playing Bach or whatever.
My father really wanted me to be a piano player,
and I was like, "No, I don't want to play classic music.
I want pop, and I want rock."
[playing "En el 2000"]
My father was really mad at me.
He was like, "This is not music."
He was super strict.
[song continues]
Then everything… [imitates explosion]
[song continues]
[Hirway] When Natalia was 17 years old, she released her first album.
It featured the hit song "En el 2000."
The album went Platinum in Mexico and reached number one on the charts.
[Natalia] Everything got really huge.
My name was everywhere and…
everything happened too fast.
The music industry was so huge for me.
I was too young for dealing that much information.
Something was missing.
I didn't know what it was.
I was having a block with inspiration.
Like, I wasn't able to write my own music.
I was being a solo artist
and having this successful moment,
but at the same time, I wasn't feeling that happy, you know?
And it didn't feel real to me.
So I needed to step back and have this space.
Something in my spirit got sick,
and I needed to heal it.
I knew that I needed to go very far away from home.
[Hirway] In 2006, despite her phenomenal success,
Natalia moved to Canada with a plan to rest, work on her visual art,
and leave the music industry behind.
She was 22, but as things turned out, she didn't escape music altogether.
[Natalia] I ended up in a house full of musicians.
Great musicians.
It was just like a window to another world that I didn't know.
Music that I didn't know that exist.
Funk,
blues,
Afrobeat.
For me was, "Wow, okay,
there's a whole world out of my world." [laughs]
[relaxing music playing]
I started writing again
and trying to have that with my own music.
I was writing songs on the piano every day, playing the piano.
I started, like, feeling comfortable, only me and the guitar.
I was just trying to find my own way of writing my music,
and I knew that I wanted it to be more like from the heart.
["Hasta la Raíz" playing]
And after almost a year, I said,
"Maybe I should go back and try again,
but this time will be my way."
["Hasta la Raíz" continues playing]
[Hirway] Natalia contacted an old friend, Leonel García,
about trying to write together.
A singer-songwriter who has sold millions of albums…
-[man] Leonel García. Take one. -[strums chord]
[man] Mark.
-[García sniffs, clears throat] -[Natalia] By then, we were friends.
So I was like, "Hey, would you write a song with me?"
And he was like, "Of course."
He asked me, "Do you know already what you want to sing about?"
And I said, "I just feel like writing a song
that is about the place I come from, Veracruz.
I want to have a lyric that will remind
all the time where I come from,
what I am, and all those things that build me as a person."
[García] "It's like something that people can relate to in a big way, emotionally.
A very proud song."
And I said, "Okay, let me see what I can come up with."
He had a melody and chords,
and then we were just like, "We should do this like a huapango."
[playing huapango rhythm]
[García] I thought about many ideas,
but I started with this approach to huapango,
that is a folkloric rhythmic of Mexico.
Always used to sing huapangos in the parties,
and I learned that part of my family relation,
like the way we were having fun or celebrating something,
huapango is always there.
It is music that is happy,
but at the same time, it's got a seriousness.
You feel free when you listen to it.
And you dance and drink with it.
The huapango thing is something that I think Natalia has too, in her DNA.
So I think that helps us to connect
and to felt we were doing something together from our roots.
[Hirway] Is this what you were playing?
-[Wurlitzer playing huapango rhythm] -Yeah, it was like mixing both things,
right, like the acoustic guitar and also like the Wurlitzer.
And we build the song from those two instruments.
That help us go into another direction,
more like pop music.
One of my rules was not taking it so seriously.
Play around and sharing the experience.
Didn't want to be so strict
and so serious about it,
because I was like that before. I wanted to be more like… [exhales]
…not thinking this is going to go on the radio,
or this is going to go commercial.
It was more free.
And then Leonel asked me to go into the studio and sing the song.
[García] If you want to make people be excited and proud,
you need to give them some phrases, some words,
that makes them feel related to their roots
-and feelings. -[Natalia sings in Spanish]
♪ I keep crossing rivers ♪
♪ Walking through forests Loving the sun ♪
♪ Every day, I keep pulling thorns ♪
♪ From the depths of my heart ♪
[in English] I was discovering the words by singing them.
It helped me to really make a stronger connection
to what I was singing
and where I was singing from.
[in Spanish] ♪ At night I keep igniting dreams ♪
♪ To clean every memory With sacred smoke ♪
[in English] The image of burning dreams to clean with this sacred smoke
every memory is what it says.
[Natalia] We have copal, which is this essence that you burn,
and it has this… smoke.
They say that this copal, you clean your aura,
and you clean your energy.
-Something like that. -Yeah.
[chuckles]
[in Spanish] ♪ When I write your name In white sand with blue background ♪
♪ When I look at the sky From the merciless shape of a grey cloud ♪
♪ You'd appear ♪
♪ One evening, climb a high hill ♪
♪ Look at the past ♪
♪ You will know That I have not forgotten you ♪
-[in English] Who are you not forgetting? -I'm not forgetting my life, my memories,
the hardest moments, the sweetest moments.
It's as if you were talking to the spirit of all the good and bad things.
I had an accident when I was six years old.
I wanted to ride a horse for the very, very first time.
My mother saw the horses,
-and they were very big… -[horse neighs]
…and she was like, "There's no way you're going on one of those."
So I was like, "I really want to do that."
[horse nickers]
And I fell down, and then I got kicked by a horse.
[horse neighs]
The recovering process was pretty hard.
It was difficult for me to see, to walk, to think,
to do anything.
The doctor said to my mother, "She might not be able to end the school
or go to the university."
And my mother was like, "There's no way."
So she started mixing the therapies with music…
and it worked.
It brought me closer to music, because it was a medicine.
It changed the course of my life.
In my case, it's been because of the bad moments
that I'm also the person that I am.
You normally are like, "I want to forget about that moment.
I don't want to think about it." But really those moments teach you things.
It teaches you a lot about loving yourself.
It's a way of saying, like,
"I might not be perfect,
but this is me, and I love myself," like…
[in Spanish] "This way, I protect you. You're still here in me."
♪ This way I protect you You're still here in me ♪
[synth bass playing slow rhythm]
We wanted to have this deep sound,
more like electric thing that will be under the bassline
or under a drum.
[drums playing tribal beat]
It's a very tribal sound,
the way that the drums are played.
We did record a real bass, but we took it out
because we wanted the song
to have this sensation of a simple thing.
If we kept the bassline,
it will take you away from that feeling.
[playing gentle melody]
Those electric guitars were recorded by Gustavo Guerrero,
my guitar player.
[melody becomes livelier]
We were first doing that melody with a xylophone.
It sounded super pretty.
[imitating melody]
We were thinking about this African influence.
Then we put that melody into the guitar.
[women vocalizing]
She came up with this amazing background vocals, crazy thing.
[vocalizing continues]
[Natalia] As soon as I knew that the album was so personal,
I was trying to do something with the sound
so it would give you texture.
[string orchestra playing slow melody]
[Hirway] How many musicians are playing this string part?
We did that with a group of students
that wanted to be part of the album.
In the studio with the producer, we got Cachorro López.
We show him what we did.
And it was more than a hundred tracks
of musicians playing, like an orchestra.
-[Hirway] Not just the strings? -[Natalia] Not just this, much more.
The producer was like, "You're ruining the song.
I want to hear your voice, and I want to hear the lyrics,
so let's take all that out."
We decided to take out the brass section,
the percussion, everything,
and keep just the most important thing with the strings…
[melody intensifies]
…because that's how you feel when you're flying away from something
and you're going through so many things
that make you stronger.
I wanted to have that emotion in the arrangement.
["Hasta la Raíz" playing]
Suddenly then we have "Hasta la Raíz," right?
Just… [imitates whoosh]
…there was the song.
["Hasta la Raíz" playing]
[Hirway] "Hasta la Raíz" was released in March 2015.
Once again, Natalia had a number one album in Mexico. It went Double Platinum.
Rolling Stone Mexico called her
one of the most important composers and performers of Latin America.
On tour, she continued to honor her country's history
by playing only in theaters that were at least 100 years old.
[García] The live performance of Nat with that song is incredibly compelling.
It gets you because of what she can do when you see her live,
because for me, live is what makes a good artist.
[Natalia] Bravo!
-[in Spanish] Shall we play? -[man] Let's play.
-[Natalia] Let's play "Hasta La Raíz." -[man] Come here.
[Natalia] Los Cojolites! [kisses]
[Hirway] Los Cojolites are a Grammy-nominated musical collective
that plays son jarocho,
a traditional style of folk music from Veracruz.
[playing son jarocho song]
[in Spanish] ♪ I carry you inside me To the root ♪
♪ And that you may grow better You will be here ♪
♪ Although I hide myself Behind the mountain ♪
♪ And find a field full of sugar cane ♪
♪ There will be no way, my moonbeam ♪
♪ For you to leave ♪
[Los Cojolites member 1] Natalia is someone who has connected with us
through the love for Veracruz's music,
and she has created a bridge so that traditional music
can be known in places where it wasn't known before.
[Los Cojolites member 2] Undoubtedly, in Veracruz, we love her,
and especially now that we are on this road
to find the music that gives us identity.
[Natalia speaking English] Many people thought that it was a love song,
or some people came to me and told me,
"Hey, Natalia, I love this song 'Hasta la Raíz.'
That is my father.
He just died, and this song is my father.
Thank you so much."
That is not the real meaning of the song, but in a way it is
because all the things that your father means for you,
you're going to keep that forever.
Even though he's gone, he stays with you.
["Hasta La Raíz" playing]
-[Hirway] Thank you so much. -Thank you. Thank you, too.
[chuckles]
-I could go-- -[in Spanish] For the therapy.
[both laugh]
[speaks Spanish]
-[in English] I'm gonna cry. -[both laugh]
[Hirway] And now here's "Hasta la Raíz" by Natalia Lafourcade in its entirety.
["Hasta La Raíz" playing]
[song ends]
[instrumental version of "Hasta la Raíz" playing]
[song ends]