Chavela Vargas, the great Costa Rican-Mexican ranchera singer, once asked, “¿Cómo será de bella la muerte que nadie ha vuelto de allá?” (“How beautiful must death be that no one has returned from it?”) At a 2024 residency at the home of Vargas, one of the greatest musicians ever to speak on the subject, Silvana Estrada watched interviews with the late singer and wrote to understand her own grief.
For a musician so thoughtful about her words — and Estrada’s signature songwriting is, as ever, full of thoughtful words — the Mexican singer-songwriter’s latest album, Vendrán Suaves Lluvias, is often searching for them, doubling back, or abandoning them altogether. On 2022’s Marchita, Estrada introduced herself…

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