Natalia Lafourcade's Theater of Song

Natalia Lafourcade, in costume for the Cancionera tour

We had been ushered into a grand old theater in Boston with a massive central chandelier, two balconies, and long history of hosting out-of-town premieres for Broadway. Still, three times an announcement came over the PA – twice in Spanish, once in English – instructing us that we were about to experience a “theater of song.” No one seemed to be paying attention to the recording. A boisterous crowd was busy greeting friends or fetching drinks, and few bothered to take their seats early. Even after holding the curtain longer than any Broadway show would permit, many in the full house were still just arriving. As the lights finally dimmed, the room continued to buzz with activity. And a diva took the stage, alone.

Natalia Lafourcade only recently turned 40, but has been making albums since she was a teen and already holds the record for most Latin Grammys won by a woman (18). The next runner up is Shakira. When she emerges from the wings – in a red dress, striking a pose in silhouette upstage – she is greeted by the audience like a pop star.

Lafourcade is, needless to say, very famous in her native Mexico, as well as among the Mexican diaspora. But she is the opposite of a pop artist who churns out hit after hit; her career is peppered with years-long breaks, stylistic left turns, and deeply considered changes to her working habits. At this point in her life, each album comes with a narrative that feels almost like a grant proposal – the concept for the project, an explanation of its significance to the artist and the greater community, and plans for its execution. Publicity campaigns framing these mature albums by Lafourcade feel less celebratory than discursive. It is clearly important to the artist that the idea of each album get across.

Thus the sober PA announcements, framing the performance to come as theater. This was underscored by the choice of venue, the pose Lafourcade struck as she entered the scene, and the set itself: upstage, a garment rack with additional dresses, one white and one black. Downstage, two areas opposite one another with a single chair, table, and desk lamp each. One is all in red; the other is all black. There is no band on stage. The theater of song begins, and Lafourcade proceeds to hold this audience for two and a half hours with just her voice and her own strummed nylon-string guitar.

You might think this sort of performance would require phenomenal theatrical chops, but that is not Lafourcade’s great skill. She inhabits several persona throughout the evening, underscored by changes in costume and body language, but these are more gestures than transformations: the diva in a red dress is followed by a cantina singer in pants and vest, swigging from a bottle of mezcal and sat down heavily with one foot up on an old suitcase to support the guitar; then an elegant singer-songwriter in a black dress, legs demurely crossed under the guitar; and finally a singer in white, standing with her guitar at a mic downstage in the spotlight. Each provides a refresh during the show, renewing the audience’s attention; however, none truly seems to change the singer or the songs.

But what songs! After projects that took her deep into tradition – two volumes of Musas (2017/18), exploring pan-Latin American song accompanied by elder statesmen Los Macorinos, and two volumes of Un Canto por México (2020/21), a collaborative benefit for earthquake reconstruction that makes use of specifically Mexican folk forms – Lafourcade has emerged with two powerful albums of original material that sound classic on release. De Todas las Flores (2022) is jazz-inflected, featuring Marc Ribot on guitar and Emilio Dorantes on piano in small group arrangements that swing with a sophisticated Cuban or Brazilian flair. Several of the tracks could easily be taken for “Latin jazz” standards, despite being new Lafourcade compositions.

The original songs on Lafourcade’s latest album, Cancionera (2025), feel even more classic, and her performances of them are so free and elastic they read like interpretations of older material rather than debuts of new melodies. This freedom was riskily coded into the process: the album was recorded as a series of live takes in the studio. “It's an act of fate,” Lafourcade told NPR in an interview. “There will be mistakes, and there will be things that might come. But as long as we all are connected, it will be a collective creation.” Producer Adán Jodorowsky (yes, a son of the mystical filmmaker) explained to Rolling Stone, “We had 18 musicians playing together with Natalia in a live setting. There are no tricks, no contrivances of any kind… If we recorded Natalia and started editing her takes in search of some elusive sense of perfection, then the music would lose its soul.”

The arrangements on Cancionera range more widely than on Lafourcade’s previous albums, dipping into strings, brass, harmony vocals, or conga-driven percussion as needed. The songs run the game on this record. “I wanted to make an album that was going to be only me and the guitar at first,” Lafourcade said to Pop Matters. “But then it became what it is right now. The music started to happen. I just felt like there was a whole universe there. I had to give it the chance to have all this instrumentation.” A few spare guitar accompaniments made it through, including the gorgeous “Mascaritas de Cristal,” where the casual squeaks and knocks of Lafourcade’s nylon-string guitar are as prominent as any of the other elements in the arrangement. And an idiosyncratic take on the traditional song “La Bruja” is, as originally envisioned, voice and guitar only. But otherwise the album luxuriates in a series of variously elegant, fun, or brooding arrangements constructed with what is clearly a deep rolodex of marvelous musicians. Each song shines, its melodies burnished, its grooves smooth.

Instead of a grand presentation of these recorded arrangements, the live tour realizes Lafourcade’s initial idea of unaccompanied presentation. The new songs from Cancionera are woven into a set of “greatest hits,” as it were. These include traditional material (even “La Bamba”!) as well as popular songs from across her career including a teenage hit that, of course, the entire audience knows by heart and sings back to her.

The resulting “theater of song” is a bit creaky, in part deliberately so – there are large moves toward sharing the theatrical illusion with the audience, such as Lafourcade applying her own makeup on stage at the start, and wiping it off at the end. Changes in costume are made partly in view as well, and the sets are manipulated and ultimately struck by stage hands without turning down the lights. Lafourcade addresses the audience frequently and directly, as any concert singer would, refusing a fourth wall so resolutely that when an audience member is moved to present her with a Mexican flag, she not only accepts it but improvises a way to incorporate it into the stage set.

Yet there are parts of this theatrical presentation that felt less Brechtian and more simply self-conscious, not least because the audience seemed unsure how to treat this not-quite-concert setting. Just as no one rushed to take their seats in time for her initial dramatic entrance, at the end the crowd didn’t wait to start leaving before all of Lafourcade’s curtain calls were done – not for lack of enthusiasm, the applause is thunderous and includes more than one standing ovation – but from a lack of ceremony that would match Lafourcade’s theatrical concept. After a stupendous performance worthy of any diva, I am left with the slightly comical image of the artist emerging from the wings holding her other costumes to let them too take a bow, and finding the audience already rushing out to the merch table or dinner reservations. On stage, it was La Scala. In the house, it remained a rock concert.

Perhaps this clash is another aspect of the risky strategy Lafourcade chose for both the album and the tour. “As long as we all are connected, it will be a collective creation,” she said about the live takes on the album – and this live presentation is not different. Lafourcade’s connection to her audience is intense, and clearly mutual. There truly is, to use the cliché that she herself doesn’t shy away from during the performance, love in the room. And as producer Jodorowsky said about the album, pursuing perfection might mean that “the music would lose its soul.” The theater of song Lafourcade has created may not be perfect theater, but her songs are realized in it with an abundance of soul, and a deep connection to audience. What more could any singer achieve? Brava!

Listening to: The Lotte Lenya Album

Cooking: Borage flowers