Original subtitles

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.

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.

The roots, in this case, extend in two directions, into Natalia's own past and

into the soil and history of where she's from.

I'm Rishi Keshe, your way.

This is Song Exploder.

I came to Veracruz when I was two years old.

That was when my parents separated.

My mother decided to move to Coatepec.

It's delicious!

I want to eat everything. They just took this out.

I just like it here.

It's simple and it's familiar.

Life is so cheap here. I'm rich.

My father, who is a musician, there's actually photos of me playing my

clasic chord when I was one or two years old.

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.

My father went really mad at me. He was like, this is not music.

He was like, super strict.

And then everything just...

When Natalia was only 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.

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 with that

much information.

Something was missing. I didn't know what 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.

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.

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 exists.

Folk, blues, Afrobeat.

For me it was, whoa, okay, there's a whole world out of my world.

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 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.

And after almost a year, I said, maybe I should go back and try again, but this

time will be my way.

Natalia reached out to an old friend, Leonel Garcia, about trying to write

together. He's a singer -songwriter whose albums have sold millions.

Leonel Garcia, take one.

Mark.

By that moment, we were friends.

So I was like, hey, would you write a song with me? And he was like, of

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

Veracruz.

I want to have a lyric that will remind all the time what I come from,

what I am.

and all the things that build me as a person.

It's like something that people can relate to in a big way, emotionally, a

proud song.

And I said, okay, let me see what I can come out with.

He had a melody and chords, and then we were just like, hey, we should do this

like a huapango.

I thought about... many ideas, but I started with the approach to huapango.

That is the folkloric rhythmic of Mexico.

Always you sing huapangos in the party. I learned that part of my family

relation, like the way we were having fun or celebrating something, huapango

always there.

It's music that is happy.

but at the same time it's got a serious myth on it and you can feel free when

you listen to it.

And you dance with it and you drink with it.

The huapanga thing is something that I think Natalia has too in her DNA.

So I think that helps us to connect and to feel we were doing something together

from our roots.

Is this what you were playing then?

Yeah. It was like mixing both things, right, like the acoustic guitar and also

like the bullets.

We built the sound from those two instruments.

That helped 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.

I didn't want to be so strict and so serious about it because I

was like that before.

I wanted to be more like not thinking this is going to go

on the radio or this is going to go commercial, you know? It was more free.

And then Leonard asked me to go into the studio and sing the song.

If you want to make people be excited and proud, you need to give them some

phrases, some words that make them feel related to their roots and to what

they're feeling.

I was covering

the world by singing them.

It helped me to really make a stronger connection to what I was singing

and where I was singing from.

The image of

burning dreams to clean with the sacred smoke every memory, is what it says.

We have copal, which is this essence that you burn, and it has this

smock. They say that this copal, you clean your aura and you clean your

energy, something like that. Yeah.

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.

And she was like, there's no way you're going to ride one of those.

So I was like, I really want to do that.

I fell down and I got kicked.

by a horse.

The recovery process was pretty hard.

It was difficult for me to see, to walk, to think, to do anything.

Doctor said to my mother, she might not be able to end the school or go to the

university. And my mother was like, no way.

He 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, okay, I want to forget about that moment. I don't want

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, así te protejo, aquí sigues dentro.

Así te protejo.

We wanted to have this deep sound, more like electric thing that will be

under the bass line or under a drum.

It's a very tribal sound, the way that 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 keep the bass line,

it will take you away from that feeling.

Those electric guitars were recorded by Gustavo Guerrero, which is my guitar

player.

We were first.

doing that melody with a xylophone, and it sounded super pretty.

We were thinking about this African influence.

Then we put that melody into the guitar.

She came out with this amazing background vocals, crazy thing.

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.

How many musicians are playing the string part?

We did that with a group of students that wanted to be part of the album.

In the studio, with the producer, with Cachorro Lopez.

We showed him what we did, and it was more than 100 tracks of musicians

playing like an orchestra.

Not just the strings. Not just this. It was 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.

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 and the arrangement.

Suddenly then, we had Hasta la Raiz, right? Just, there was a song.

Hasta la Raiz was released in March 2015.

And once again, Natalia had a number one album in Mexico.

It went double platinum, and 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.

The live performance of Nat with that song is incredibly compelling. It gets

because of what she can do when you see her live. Because for me, live is what

makes a good artist.

Bravo!

Los Cojolites are a Grammy -nominated musical collective that

plays Son Jarocho, a traditional style of folk music from Veracruz.

Aunque yo me ocupe de otra montaña y encuentre un campo lleno de caña, de

manera mi rayo de luna que se vaya.

Bueno, es una persona que se ha encontrado con nosotros a través del

amor por la música de Veracruz, y que ha generado un puente para que la música

tradicional pueda ser conocida en otros espacios donde antes no era conocida.

Many people thought that it was a love song.

Some people came to me and told me, hey, Natalia, I love this song, Estela Raiz,

that it's 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.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you too.

For the therapy.

I'm going to cry.

And now, here's Hasta La Raiz by Natalia Lafourcade in its entirety.

Sigo cruzando ríos, andando cero, amando el sol. Cada día sigo sacando espinas

de lo profundo del corazón.

En la noche sigo encendiendo sueños para limpiar con el humo sagrado para dar

recuerdos.

When your name is written on the white sand with a blue background, when you

look at the sky in the cruel form of a gray cloud, you appear.

One afternoon I go up to the hill, I look at the past, I hug you and I don't

forget you.

I take you inside, to the root.

Thank you.

Y por más que crezca, vas a estar aquí.

Aunque yo me oculte tras la montaña, encuentro un campo lleno de caña. No

manera en mi rayo de luna que tú te vayas.