Veracruz, MX · latin-folk · singer-songwriter

Silvana Estrada

2 upcoming festivals

Veracruz songwriter with a cuatro and one of the most arresting voices in Latin folk — jazz-schooled, heartbreak-fluent.

Silvana Estrada is a Mexican singer and songwriter from Coatepec, Veracruz, who grew up around instrument-making — her parents build stringed instruments — and studied jazz before turning to her own writing. She performs largely with the Venezuelan cuatro, a small four-string guitar, and builds songs around that spare accompaniment and her contralto voice.

Her material draws on Latin American folk traditions, particularly the son jarocho of her home region, alongside jazz phrasing and the confessional habits of a singer-songwriter. The songs are usually slow, unadorned and centred on loss and attachment, sung in Spanish, with arrangements kept thin enough that small shifts in her delivery carry the weight.

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