Un Canto por México, Vol 1

Mexican singer-songwriter Natalia Lafourcade is one of those superstars who makes the rest of us feel idle and talentless. She plays more than a dozen instruments, has seven jobs on her Wikpedia page, and her mantelpiece supports several Grammys and part of an Oscar for ‘Remember Me’ from Pixar’s Coco (2017). Un Canto por México, Vol 1, her eighth studio album, is a fundraiser for the Son Jarocho Cultural Center in her native Veracruz, which was damaged in the 2017 earthquake. Sí, señora, even her day job involves being amazing. The album has a lot going for it musically, as she combines the pop-rock that has made her a hit across Latin America with the more rootsy son jarocho that is the soundtrack of her city and region. It follows up on a sold-out concert she gave alongside many famous artists in Mexico City last November, some of whom have showed up for the studio recording.

Son jarocho is a kind of polished and controlled and generally upbeat mariachi music – one foot in the Mexican farmlands, the other in the Caribbean Sea – which is here given classical flourishes and string arrangements. The loose country rhythm suits her intimate vocals on ‘Mexicana Hermosa’ (performed with Carlos Rivera) and the heartfelt ‘Veracruz’. Her impressive range is showcased on ‘Una Vida’, and is quite able to match the energy of the pounding brass. ‘Hasta La Raíz’, featuring son jarocho specialists Los Cojolites and Argentina’s Los Auténticos Decadentes, is a cool, catchy pop number; a strumming guitar and off-the-cuff lyric moves it along sweetly, but even here the strings are allowed in and her voice takes flight once more. Ten of the 14 tracks are her own. While Lafourcade is arguably most affecting when she approaches the tragic lilting style of Chavela Vargas, her multifacetedness has its own allure.