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Over 25 years, Silvana Estrada confesses she was unable to learn the art of expressing anger. “It drained my energy and self-respect,” she reflects. Sadness, on the other hand, was something she always understood: “She has always been by my side.” At 28 years old, Estrada was raised outside 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. As a lonely teenager, she discovered jazz legends like Billie Holiday. Their music illuminated her inner turmoil and introduced her to vocal improvisation.

Hailing from a lineage of instrument makers, she started making her own music, 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,” notes fellow musician Natalia Lafourcade. “Her voice is freedom, it is birds of paradise, it is Mexico and Latin America. It echoes a bond with love, the natural world, and human connections.”

She remains fond of that record, she says today, sitting in a New York cafe. It won her a Latin Grammy and widespread acclaim. However, later, she explains, “I really wanted to do something with my humour. Post-Marchita, I felt confined to a somber, solemn persona. That is also me, but I wanted to show myself in a way that’s even closer to how I really am.” 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 says: “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. But then unexpected losses forced her to get acquainted with an even darker side of her personality. Her latest songs brim with accusation and despair: toward former partners who didn’t return her feelings; 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 fabulously melodramatic, comic kiss-off for something as pathetic as “el ghosting”. Each verse evokes the image of a tipped wineglass. “Sometimes our lives are like a telenovela – infinite drama and suffering,” she says, recalling the intense soaps from her childhood. “Existence involves pain, but ghosting—where someone chooses invisibility—is utterly miserable!” She still sounds offended. ‘It’s funny because I guess it shows how small we can be.”

Harnessing Anger’s Energy

While composing, she discovered anger’s utility. “Anger drives you to uphold your boundaries and desires. It’s a peculiar, almost grandmotherly nudge toward self-awareness. Ultimately, anger is essential for personal and collective survival.”

However, Vendrán Suaves Lluvias conveys serenity; it stands as a breathtakingly beautiful record. Following unsuccessful collaborations with producers, she took creative control. She realised: “‘You’re the only one that knows what you want.’ It was so irresponsible to let in other people, to ignore my own desire.” She enriched her cuatro with orchestral elements, her powerful voice overflowing with empathy. The radiant Como un Pájaro, a Latin Grammy nominee, evokes springtime freshness. She was surprised by the joyful melodies that came out of her. “Aging has taught me to cherish joy amid adversity. This album is like a pendulum between beauty and terror.”

Loss and Homage

The insult of being ghosted paled next to the tragedy of losing her best friend and fellow musician, 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 confesses. “I was an odd child. I liked music that nobody was listening to. I felt deeply isolated. Even friends treated me poorly. I’ve always been highly sensitive.” Her first real friend, Jorge taught her what friendship was. “A person who loves, accepts, and honestly communicates with you. We were inseparable.”

When she planned to relocate to Mexico City, her parents consented only because Jorge joined. “They adored Jorge. He was like an older brother to me.” He accompanied her on tours. “I enjoyed so much feeling loved, not so like this super lonely child.”

Regarding Jorge, she shares: “I could be a child again. My heart was so light. Now it carries heaviness. I’m adapting to it.” Grave and sharpened by sudden bursts of 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, and interpolates her words: “¿Cómo será de hermosa la muerte que nadie ha vuelto de allá?” “I cling to that belief,” she states.

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 can’t even believe in jail. I advocate for rehabilitation.”

Estrada has always been vocal about justice: one of the earliest online hits for her is a 2018 video supporting Mexican abortion rights, three years before they were legalised. In 2022, she released the song Si Me Matan (If They Kill Me) after the student Mara Fernández was murdered by a ride-share driver. “I use my platform to empower, particularly young girls,” she affirms.

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. “I see her as an old soul and wisdom within a young body full of vitality and beauty in every sense.”

Art, Society, and Dialogue

In 2023, her music was used to counter corridos tumbados, a genre criticized for cartel glorification. Estrada says she was “honoured”, but had mixed feelings. 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.” “Mexico needs open dialogue involving all. Conversation is important to change your reality.”

Self-reflection fostered emotional accountability. Writing the ultimatum Dime (Tell Me), she realised she didn’t want an ex to stay. she wanted to leave. “Discovering the power to walk away was liberating,” she explains. “For me, it was hard to understand that I could just say no.”

She links it to Greek mythology, specifically the Furies: goddesses of vengeance depicted with horrifying facial features. “I see their rage as a response to divine injustice. Nobody wants to feel connected to the Furies because they’re ugly – it’s a really machista, misogynist conception of female fury. But I actually feel much more connected with their spirit than the rest of the 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.”