Q&A: Where Soft Rains Fall, Silvana Estrada Stands Strong
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY SAMANTHA SORIA ☆
THERE IS INHERENT BEAUTY IN PAIN—In the moment, amid all the sorrow endured, this idea may not seem or feel true. However, with time, through reflection and healing, one can learn that to overcome all that pain, if you’re willing to mend scars and wounds, a peaceful, joyful and restful heart awaits you in the end.
For Latin GRAMMY-winning artist Silvana Estrada, this truth resonates deeply and forms the foundation of her self-produced studio album, Vendrán Suaves Lluvias [‘Soft rains will come’].
Released three years after her debut, Marchita, on Vendrán Suaves Lluvias, Silvana opens up as she reflects on a challenging time in her life, marked by various creative and personal struggles. Throughout each song, her brave vulnerability is a testament to the one-of-a-kind talent that she possesses, and brilliantly creates space for anger and tenderness to coexist without shame.
From the challenges and lessons of self-producing for the first time to discovering that honoring anger can be a vital source of self-discovery and healing, Silvana shares in this candid interview with The Luna Collective the journey she experienced bringing this album to life and the emotional chapter she finds herself in today.
LUNA: You recently kicked off your tour in Bogotá, which is so exciting because my mom is from there. How does it feel to be back on tour and share a collection of new songs with fans?
SILVANA: I’m so excited and happy! It’s so cool that your mom’s from there. I really love Colombia. It’s like my home, far from home. I only played this one show in Bogotá, but it was so special to see the people's reaction. I almost cried so many times because it was insane. I’ve been working on this album for three years. It had its ups and downs; the process wasn’t easy at all. I produced it, and it took me a while to understand how I wanted to approach the songs. Now that I can actually play the arrangements live and get to listen to the people singing back loudly, seeing their reactions has been beautiful.
That was something that was worrying me a little bit: how Marchita and the Vendrán Suaves Lluvias are connected, especially musically. How are they going to live together in a show, but it was very relaxing and beautiful to see how all these songs speak to each other in a way I wasn’t even aware of. It was like a whole… como un viaje, a journey. It was beautiful to hear people singing “Dime” and all the singles. I actually presented “Good Luck, Good Night,” which is a song that comes out tomorrow, and I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna play it live today!” And everyone was so into it! I’m just super happy and proud of all our work.
LUNA: At the heart of your music, vulnerability is such an essential key player. I find that especially in Latino culture, when you’re emotional or any ounce of vulnerability comes through—depending on the environment in your family— it can be kind of like, “No, no, no, we don’t touch that. We don’t talk about that. You shut it down; that is what our ancestors did. We don’t talk about the intense stuff.” Do you see your music as part of a larger shift—one where emotional expression is no longer stigmatized but instead embraced as a strength?
SILVANA: I don’t know if it’s a general thing. I can definitely see a deep difference between me and my parents and my grandparents. Even the babies of the family! The other day, my sobrina said, “I think I feel sad. I don’t know, I need to sit down and understand this feeling that I’m feeling in my heart.” And I was like, “Oh my god!”
LUNA: They’re so wise!
SILVANA: They are so wise! (Laughs). It’s super interesting what you’re saying about Latin culture changing from later years. I feel like people are starting to realize we need to heal stuff. It’s not going to happen by itself, you know? I think it’s beautiful because I started to do it without thinking of anybody or that I would become a singer. I started to sing because I needed to, and I loved it. I did it without any expectation of any kind; that’s how Marchita was born. Even this album, Vendrán Suaves Lluvias, was a little bit the same. I was struggling with a lot of things at the time. I was very tired, my best friend was murdered, I was dealing with so many things, and I was like, if I don’t do music, I’m going to implode and something really bad is going to happen.
LUNA: Like a kettle about to go off.
SILVANA: Yeah, exactly! When I sing the songs, I suddenly go back to that same place of, “I’m doing this because I want to heal.” I want to express myself because language is not enough. I want to feel freedom for a couple of minutes, and I think people really appreciate that. I feel that is what happens at the shows. People are crying, and I think they get to really connect with themselves, and the fact that we are a group of people, it’s kind of a collective ritual. Healing and connection.
I think it’s super important, especially now that so many things are changing culturally. Our generation… I don’t know how you feel about this, but our generation is kind of dealing with our ancestors' pain, and it’s kind of like,“Oh, we figured it out! Hey, we should be feeling better!” Sometimes, my mom will tell me this super hardcore stuff that happened in her life, and I’m like, “Are you okay?” And she’s like, “Yeah, it’s fine!” And then I need to go to therapy (Laughs).
LUNA: It’s always after something traumatic, they always go, “But you know, ¡gracias a Dios! Everything is good!” (laughs).
SILVANA: ¡Si! ¡Si! ¡Si! ¡Si! Si! (Laughs). No, y mi mamá como, “¡No, no, no! ¡No pasa nada! ¡No pasa nada!” [“No, no, no! Don’t worry! Don’t worry!”]. I think there’s definitely a connection with the time that we’re living in my music, of course, but more specifically with this kind of change of mindset of Latino culture for sure.
LUNA: Let's talk about the album—Vendrán Suaves Lluvias. When I finished listening, I sat quietly for a few good minutes, just absorbing everything. Then I listened to it again, and after that second playthrough, the only thing I kept thinking was, “Please, please, please, let this be available on vinyl!”I want to play this record so loudly. I want to hear everything! My god, it was so beautiful.
SILVANA: There is going to be a vinyl, so good news! But, yeah, thank you so much. I put in so many days working and going through a bunch of self-work, getting to know myself better than ever in my life, fighting with so many ghosts and demons, and falling in love with music every single day. That was the easiest and the hardest part of the process. Not forgetting that I’m in love with music, I’m in love with this magic, why I’m doing it, and that’s the only thing that matters—also, getting to say what I wanted to say.
This album is full of what we were saying. It’s full of beauty and pain, and there’s this sort of lightness to it. There are these songs that you can kind of dance to, and then there’s this madness. At some point in the album, I’m just going crazy and I’m angry, and then on the B-side, it’s more calm and accepting, it’s about contemplation and forgiveness. It’s basically my journey for the last five years, and I’m really proud of getting to fight for the sound I wanted and the way I wanted to do it. That clarity, at the time, didn’t look like clarity. I thought I was going crazy and I thought I was super lost, but now with perspective, I think sometimes getting lost is definitely part of the process and it’s always worth it. It’s an invitation to start a journey to be somewhere else where obviously you need to be. I’m super grateful for all this experience, for sure.
LUNA: You also produced this album yourself, which is so cool. I’ve always wondered from a listener's perspective, when an artist produces their own album, how crazy it must be, especially when it’s your first time doing that. What surprised you most about putting that hat on and being in that driver’s seat position? Did it feel more empowering or more vulnerable than expected?
SILVANA: Definitely more vulnerable than expected. That’s a super interesting question because I’ve always worked with male producers [that are] older than me, well-known. I think I’ve developed this idea of, “Oh, a producer is this person!” Probably a man with masculine energy, super present, and able to take every decision without hesitation. An eloquent guy who will be like, “This is this, and this is that!” and never doubting anything. That was the suit of the producer, and when I decided to produce this album, I tried to wear that suit, but it was impossible. It was too heavy; I’m not that person.
I don’t have those qualities. I’m someone who hesitates a lot. I need to take my time. I’m not a quick thinker; my process is slow. I also don’t like to have rules. I don’t like to have an agenda. I just want to listen to what my heart wants and try to react to the band, the day, the environment, and what's going on musically. I’m not someone who is like, “From this hour to this hour, we’re doing this!” I don’t even know how to do an Excel spreadsheet! I don’t know how to organize anything! I don’t even know how to organize my house! (Laughs). I don’t have anything that [resembles] that suit to be the “perfect producer.” So it took me a while to allow myself to be myself while I was producing.
I think that’s one of the greatest achievements of my life. Letting myself be myself and not trying to imitate the process of others. That took so much courage and suffering because all the time, I was asking myself, “Am I even able to do this? Do I have the capacity? Is a producer allowed not to be one hundred percent sure about any opinion?” It was a long process. It took me a while, but then I started to create my own strategies of how to approach the band, the musicians, the orchestra, the arrangements, and the arrangers. I started to create more soft, sweet, tender ways of communication, safe spaces for everybody, starting with myself. I think I created this non-traditional process, and that’s why I ended up doing this album in three different countries, just editing for two months because I recorded too many things. I had to deliberate what was actually needed and what wasn’t, and I did it on my own.
LUNA: You’ve mentioned that this album comes from asking yourself how to honor your anger and create an existence that’s both truthful and beautiful. This statement is so powerful because, for so long, anger has been this thing to either ignore or suppress. How did this tug-of-war present itself in terms of the creative process, and what lessons did you learn along the way from not shying away from that anger you were feeling?
SILVANA: Anger is such a weird place to be, and it’s not weird “just” because. I think society has created this rejection of anger, especially for women. I imagine that for Latino women, it’s even harder. I think this album is filled with me realizing that anger has been telling me all this vital information about me, like where I want to be, where I don't want to be, how I want to be treated and how I definitely don't want to be treated. And I think that the problem with how we are raising our kids, especially little girls who will become women, is that we are so far from our anger. We are so far from our limits that it definitely takes a lot to find your own limits, and that's insane because the limits are there. You can feel where the limit is, but for you to feel it, you need to allow anger at its very beginning. The problem is that we never share our anger until it is too late, and we're kind of burned out from allowing things to happen.
I think this album is the moment where I realized that I really need to understand my limits, because I've been crossing them for so long that I'm not in a good place. Like, where can I find that information? Where can I find my limits? I realized that it’s anger that will teach me this vital information.
There are a couple of songs [on the album] that are a tribute to that moment, which I think is a really happy moment. We have a minimum amount of words to describe such intense and complex feelings, you know? And there's a song called “Dime” where I talk about confronting this super-ambiguous relationship I was involved in. I remember the moment when I was like, “Hey, I can actually say no. I can say I don’t like this—bye! And that’s something you will be doing forever, for the rest of your life.”
Maybe it's something super common, but in that moment, I was like, “Am I the only one that doesn't know how to react to my own anger and rage?” It really took me many therapy sessions to find what I should do with this [anger] that I’m feeling.
I used to have this idea that a good song is never gonna come out of anger. A good song comes from huge sadness or joy. But then I was so angry at a moment in my life, especially when my best friend was murdered without any reason in particular, just because. I was like, “If I don’t do something with this, if I don’t create beauty with all this that I’m feeling, I’m going to explode.” I think anger has been another, parallel, huge journey within this album.
LUNA: I’m so glad you brought up “Dime” because that song was magical and beautiful. “Flores” is another great example of this perfect combination of soft and powerful. I love how it brought this sense of liberation. But from my understanding, the production behind that song was very difficult, particularly challenging given the vision you had for it in your mind to feel like a “great awakening.” Could you talk to me about some of the key obstacles you faced in bringing that vision to life and how you ultimately overcame them?
SILVANA: The first difficulty with “Flores” was that I tried to do this song with different producers. I think “Flores” is definitely one of the songs that made me realize I was the one who could actually produce this album. I always had this image of “Flores” being this sweet melody, but saying angry, intense words. It’s almost like a joke to me—I’m singing this super sweet melody, but in the verses, I’m telling you, “What’s your problem?” Basically, “Do you want to be with me or not?”
I always had this image of a huge outro. The song is growing and growing, but then I need to do something with all of these feelings that isn’t going out through this song specifically. I was like, “I need to do this outro where it’s like everything is falling apart and it’s super unstable.” At the beginning, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be with a full orchestra, but I was definitely trying to do a huge contrast between the main song and something at the end.
A big struggle [too], for a couple of producers I worked with, “Flores” [for them] was a love song and that’s it. (Laughs). There was no understanding, I guess, of what I was trying to say, maybe? I wanted to keep it simple, and the problem that I had—and I can see myself arguing, like, “Let’s keep it simple! Let’s do something big but simple. Let’s not create another part. Let’s be repetitive and simple and huge!”—I [was told] “No, you can’t do that, that’s boring. That doesn’t have any musical value, what you’re saying.” And I was like, “Okay, it’s fine, I’ll do it anyway.”
To have all of those words in mind was hard because I was like, “Are they right? Is this boring? Is this stupid?” I had to fight a lot with my ego getting hurt by those words, and say [to myself], “No, whatever! Your ego is not conducting this. It’s the music and you need to listen to the music inside.” Yeah, that was really hard, emotionally!
LUNA: Very quickly, I want to talk about two songs on the album that have become some favorites of mine — “Un Rayo De Luz” and “El Alma Mía.” I love both; they truly hit home for me, especially “Un Rayo De Luz.” That song opened something for me. It made me think of my grandma, who passed last year. We had a complicated relationship, but now that a year has passed, it’s weird… I never really thought much of her because of our rocky relationship, but when listening to this song, I started to think about her. It was like unlocking these little boxes for me.
When you sing the line: “¿Cómo será de hermosa la muerte que nadie ha vuelto de allá?” / How beautiful death must be, if no one has ever come back from there?” I had never heard that before. I had never thought of death in that way. There’s a tranquility to that line, a sort of settled peace that I think can help many with the grieving process, because grieving is not a linear thing. It’s not black and white. It’s very complex.
With my grandmother, I don’t think I’ve processed her death [fully], but in this slow process that I’m still unraveling, like a ball of yarn, that line that you sing has definitely left me like, “Okay, I think I’m getting it now.” I don’t know if for you that was the same feeling that you felt when you sang that line or when you decided to put it in the song. You heard it from someone, right?
SILVANA: Yeah, it’s not the exact phrase. First of all, thank you for telling me your story. It’s beautiful.
LUNA: Thank you for telling yours! With that song, the situations were different between those who were close to us, but death is this thing that is so tricky to understand and process on your own, you know?
SILVANA: Yeah! That phrase is not the exact same phrase, but it’s the idea of something that Chavela Vargas said when asked if she was afraid of death because she was very sick, and she spent her whole life being an alcoholic. It was kind of crazy that she lived for so long. All of her friends passed before her. She was very lonely when she was old, and her body was really, you know… maltrecho, maltratado. So it was an interviewer with a lot of courage who asked her if she was afraid of death, and basically, she was like, “No, no, no, no, it must be beautiful there if people aren’t coming back. That place must be awesome.”
I remember I listened to this interview because I was doing a residency at her house in Tepoztlán, here in Mexico, with my really dear friend, Jimena, who’s a painter. She was there painting, and I was there trying to create songs. I listened to that phrase and I was like, “Wow!” I felt so relieved for a couple of seconds because the deaths of my friends were quite recent [at the time]. Now, in retrospect, I have come to understand that my heart was so heavy every day for so long, and with that phrase, I kind of felt my heart [become] light again. It was super powerful.
I didn’t even think that I needed to do a song with this phrase. It just happened. A couple of hours after I went to the pool, I took the guitar and in a few minutes, the song was there. I didn't have to think much [about it]. It was born in a couple of minutes, and I remember feeling like it was a song that I knew before. It felt like, “Oh, I’m remembering this song that I knew before in a past life or something.” It gave me a bunch of tranquilidad.
You know it’s crazy because death is something that really brings us together. To know that we are going to die, and we don’t know when or why. The whole idea of even making plans for tomorrow is the most hopeful attitude that we can have. The moment that we realize, when we are aware that this life [lasts] a second, we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, I think we fall in love with life faster and better. We get to love life better, and also this knowledge that we’re [eventually] going to die, I think, makes us more empathetic. It makes us more aware that life is sacred, so we need to take care of others, not just ourselves.
I think death in a country like this [Mexico], where ten or more women are dying every single day, murdered by men, mostly. Narcos are very violent, we’ve been dealing with a violent justice system, police, and army… I think in Mexico, [with] Día de Muertos, for example, to me, it’s the most healing days of the year. The fact that you get to see all of your family and the people that you love, and you get together to remember who aren’t here anymore… You get to celebrate life through death. That is one of the most important things in my cultural construction of life, and I think this song [“Un Rayo De Luz”] speaks the same language of Día de Muertos. Like how can we talk about death knowing that we’re alive, celebrating that we are alive, loving our dead ones, and resting our hearts during grief.
LUNA: I love that. Final question—If Marchita was about first love and navigating the heartbreak after its end, and Vendrán Suaves Lluvias is about overcoming tragedy, healing, self-discovery and finding the light at the end of it all, what would you say is the emotional chapter you’re in now?
SILVANA: I’m in a really good place now for the first time in so many years! I think I’m actually enjoying love. I’ve been working a lot to enjoy my processes. The other day, I was thinking that lately I’ve been only doing love songs but not sad ones. You know, loving my partner, loving life, loving my family. After all this darkness, I think I’ve been clinging to my connection with love and tenderness. I also feel like I’m in this chapter of my life—I’m 28— I’m starting to not feel like a kid anymore, which is sad, but it’s okay.
There’s this kind of capacity for contemplation that I’m having now. Deep contemplation and deep appreciation—even if it’s hard now— for humanity, you know? Our history. The way we love. The way we laugh. The way we create so many beautiful things. And a big concern, why we’ve been able to create so much beauty.
We’re kind of in this moment where I feel like we’re against life, against freedom, against all the beautiful things that we will ever get to know. I think that’s my journey now. I’m trying to fall in love with every [single] day and also trying to understand what I can do, what we can do in these times of violence and desperation. I feel hopeful, actually. I feel at peace mostly with my work and my music. Yeah, I think I’m in a good place.
