NEW YORK - A new live album from Grammy-winning Mexican singer Natalia Lafourcade offers an intimate glimpse into the artist's process, capturing a singular moment she says bridges to her next creative chapter.
"Live at Carnegie Hall," out Thursday, is the recording of a shimmering Lafourcade performance in October 2022 at the legendary New York music venue.
It was there two years ago that she debuted her most recent studio album "De Todas Las Flores" ("Of All The Flowers"), featuring cameos from stars including David Byrne, Omara Portuondo and Jorge Drexler.
The raw, deeply personal work scored both a Grammy and a Latin Grammy, yet another feather in the cap of the internationally acclaimed 40-year-old.
Singing live onstage is part of giving a song to its audience, she told AFP in a recent interview -- a moment when it ceases to be hers alone.
"I just feel like I was there to give the chance to this song to exist itself," Lafourcade said, referring in particular to "Hasta La Raiz," a hit about her Mexican roots and homeland, which was on her breakthrough studio album of the same name.
In offering it to an audience, Lafourcade says it becomes a piece of art to "remind us of something important -- that we all connect."
For her personally, "Hasta La Raiz" ("To The Root") serves as a reminder of home, "and that I can fly to anywhere, in any place that I can dream, and I can go far away from that place. But I have that, that root."
"I think that's important for many people for different reasons," Lafourcade said.
But the knowledge that her music will take on a life of its own is not part of her writing process, she said: "I try not to think, because that will step in the way of the song and the lyrics."
"Sometimes I just feel like music is just like, 'get out of the way, let me in!'" she exclaimed.
It is best to just get out of the way, she continued, "because then music surprises you."