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For 25 years, the Mexican singer-songwriter confesses she did not know the art of expressing anger. “It drained my energy and self-respect,” she states. Melancholy, on the other hand, was a familiar companion: “I live with her very close to me.” Now 28, the artist grew up near Veracruz, a city on the Mexican Gulf, where she witnessed violence from so many angles: widespread gender-based killings, narcoculture, and environmental attacks on coffee plantations and waterways. During her solitary youth, she found solace in jazz legends like Billie Holiday. Their music illuminated her inner turmoil and introduced her to vocal improvisation.

Born to a family of luthiers, Estrada began composing her own songs, played on a four-string Venezuelan cuatro and drawing from Mexican folk traditions. Her 2022 debut, Marchita, meaning “withered,” and the record offered a spare, devastating, deeply poetic account of first love gone awry.

“I consider her one of the richest artists of our time,” says her peer and mentor, the Mexican songwriter Natalia Lafourcade. “Her voice is freedom, it is birds of paradise, it is Mexico and Latin America. It reflects a deep connection to love, nature and human relationships.”

Estrada still loves that album, she says today, during a New York interview. It won her a Latin Grammy and widespread acclaim. But afterwards, she explains, “I really wanted to do something with my humour. After Marchita, I was a little bit trapped in this character that is sad and dark, very eloquent, very solemn. While that’s part of me, I sought to reveal my truer self.” She fondly recalls her younger self so animatedly that her sparkly rose-shaped earrings swing. Some of Marchita’s songs dated back to when she was 18, she notes: “I view that eloquence and darkness as naive, believing it was the sole way to express love and dreams.”

Shifting Sounds and Deeper Emotions

She planned a brighter, more pop-oriented follow-up. Yet, personal losses unveiled a deeper, darker aspect. Estrada’s new lyrics are stark with recrimination and brutal despondence: for ex-lovers who couldn’t reciprocate; regarding a friend who abandoned her over career envy. I got so depressed after that. I thought, ‘I cannot believe that I’ve been loving you as my brother all these years and you don’t want to see me because you feel small?’ The shock was profound.”

She transformed her anger into Good Luck, Good Night, a dramatic, humorous farewell to the pettiness of ghosting. Each verse evokes the image of a tipped wineglass. “Sometimes our lives are like a telenovela – infinite drama and suffering,” she says, referencing the high-octane Latin American soap operas of her youth. “Which is true, to be alive is to suffer, but being ghosted, the fact that someone who is alive decides to be a ghost for you – it’s so miserable!” She still sounds offended. ‘It’s funny because I guess it shows how small we can be.”

The Power of Anger

During the process of writing, “I was like, wow, anger is really helpful,” she says. “Anger is this energy that really wants you to be responsible for your needs and your limits. It’s beautiful, strange, uncomfortable, almost like a grandmother telling you: ‘What are you doing? You don’t want this.’ Ultimately, anger is essential for personal and collective survival.”

But Vendrán Suaves Lluvias (Soft Rains Will Come) doesn’t sound angry; it stands as a breathtakingly beautiful record. After futile attempts to make the record with four other producers, Silvana decided to do it herself. She acknowledged her unique vision. Trusting others over her instincts felt irresponsible.” She augments her cuatro with swooping flourishes of strings, piano and woodwind, her commanding voice brimming with compassion. The bright, dewy Como un Pájaro (Like a Bird), a Latin Grammy nominee, evokes springtime freshness. She was surprised by the joyful melodies that came out of her. “As I get older, I understand the importance of pleasure and joy, even during hard times. This record swings between beauty and fear.”

Tragedy and Tribute

Ghosting’s sting faded compared to losing her friend Jorge, killed violently with his family in late 2022. “This is a little bit embarrassing, but I didn’t value friendship very much when I was growing up,” she says. “I was a little bit weird. My musical tastes were unconventional. I felt deeply isolated. Even the friends I had were super mean to me. I’ve always been highly sensitive.” Jorge showed her true friendship. “Someone that loves you, accepts you, who has the generosity of telling you: ‘Hey, you did this and I didn’t like it,’ or, ‘This is amazing, I love you.’ We were always together.”

When Estrada wanted to move to Mexico City, her parents consented only because Jorge joined. “They adored Jorge. He was like an older brother to me.” When she started touring, he came too. “I relished feeling cherished, shedding my loneliness.”

With Jorge, says Estrada: “I could be a child again. My heart felt weightless. Now it carries heaviness. I’m adapting to it.” Somber and intensified by strings, Un Rayo de Luz (A Ray of Light) is her tribute to him. It was written during a residency at the house of the late singer Chavela Vargas, her hero, incorporating her line: “How beautiful must death be?” “I really want to believe that,” she says.

Advocacy and Empowerment

The perpetrators were apprehended. “They’ll perish in prison,” she declares, “but justice is merely the baseline. The state, everybody, failed us. I don’t fully trust incarceration. I believe in reintegration.”

She has long championed justice: a 2018 video backing abortion rights gained early traction, three years before they were legalised. In 2022, she released Si Me Matan following a student’s murder. “I try to use the voice I have and the space that has been given to me as an example of empowerment, especially for little girls,” she says.

Lafourcade inspired her. She returns the compliment. “She is undoubtedly the voice of young generations, with a soul and heart of great sensitivity,” says Lafourcade. “She possesses ancient wisdom in a vibrant, beautiful form.”

Music, Culture, and Conversation

In 2023, Mexico’s then president played Estrada’s music as part of an effort to deter young people from corridos tumbados, the genre of regional Mexican trap popularised by Peso Pluma that has been accused of glorifying drug cartels and stoking violence. Estrada says she was “honoured”, but feels otherwise conflicted. Instead of cancelling this kind of music, she says, “we should talk about why people are admiring people who are killing us, killing our freedom, killing all the things we love.” She adds: “In Mexico, there are so many things we need to start talking about, and we need to involve everybody. Conversation is important to change your reality.”

Listening to herself helped Estrada become accountable to her own feelings. Composing Dime, she recognized her desire to leave. She sought departure. “It was such a useful thing to realise you can always turn around and walk away,” she explains. “I struggled to grasp my right to refuse.”

She draws parallels to the Furies of Greek myth: goddesses of vengeance depicted with horrifying facial features. “My interpretation is that they were angry because of all the injustice on Olympus. Nobody wants to feel connected to the Furies because they’re ugly – it’s a really machista, misogynist conception of female fury. But I align with their spirit over other goddesses: OK, I’m gonna have snakes instead of hair and one eye in my frente – I don’t care: I just want to be whatever makes me happy, or more alive, or better.”