Until the root, by Natalia Lafourcade: lyrics and song analysis
The song Up to the root It is part of a self-titled album by Natalia Lafourcade, the sixth of her entire discography, released in 2015.
It was composed and set to music by Lafourcade herself with the participation of the musician Leonel García. It quickly positioned itself at the top of the Latin American charts.
The song was written after a period of personal searches for Lafourcade, in which she traveled through different Latin American countries in search of inspiration, material and roots of her identity. These three years of searching resulted in this important pop culture song. Let us know its meaning.
Lyrics of the song Until the root
I keep crossing rivers
Walking jungles
Loving the sun
Every day I keep picking out thorns
From the depths of the heart
At night I keep lighting dreams
To clean every memory with the sacred smoke
When i write your name
On the white sand with blue bottom
When I look at the sky in the cruel form of a gray cloud
Appear you
One afternoon I went up a high hill
Look at the past
You will know that I have not forgotten you
I take you inside, to the root
And as much as it grows, you will be here
Although I hide behind the mountain
And find a field full of cane
There will be no way, my moonbeam
That you go
I think that every moment I survived walking
And every second of uncertainty
Every moment of not knowing
They are the exact key to this fabric
That I'm carrying under my skin
So I protect you
Here…
Song analysis Up to the root
In the first place, the voice of the text begins by showing her life process, a continuous search, the path through an unfinished path in which the walker goes through all kinds of situations.
The images of these situations, the rivers, the jungles, the sun, also work to weave a telluric memory, an identity forged from the earth and that is embodied in geography.
I keep crossing rivers
Walking jungles
Loving the sun
That loving geography, with which the voice is related, is also the scene of conflict, pain and the deepest anguish, of which the thorns and the night are images.
But, in the middle of that night, the voice announces its purpose to "light" dreams. The figure used turns the dream into an illuminating, creative, motivating and energetic principle that allows to purify the memory.
Every day I keep picking out thorns
From the depths of the heart
At night I keep lighting dreams
To clean every memory with the sacred smoke
The entire stage is ready to show what dwells in the depths of the soul. When you look down, there is a happy memory, a joyful memory of affection, an otherness that builds an unbreakable memory.
It is the other who needs to know that he has not been forgotten. And the voice of the song announces what he already knows: that in the most remote, in the strangest, in the most unlikely and also in the everyday, the memory of the other and the consciousness of the memory of him will emerge.
When i write your name
On the white sand with blue bottom
When I look at the sky in the cruel form of a gray cloud
Appear you
One afternoon I went up a high hill
Look at the past
You will know that I have not forgotten you
For this reason, the lyrical subject, the voice, knows that the presence of the other does not depart from itself. It is not just a peaceful memory. It is inherent to the person, it is in the nurturing land, it is comprehensive, it cannot hide as well as the subject cannot flee even if he wants to.
This affection is a moonbeam, its own, personal, it is a halo that illuminates in the midst of darkness.
I take you inside, to the root
And as much as it grows, you will be here
Although I hide behind the mountain
And find a field full of cane
There will be no way, my moonbeam
That you go
This integration between one and the other is also built in history. Each lived experience weaves a network of certainties in the midst of uncertainty. It is a protective net of that relationship, of that kind of unity with the other, which stands firm in the midst of the most challenging circumstances, because it is not a dress but a skin.
I think that every moment I survived walking
And every second of uncertainty
Every moment of not knowing
They are the exact key to this fabric
That I'm carrying under my skin
So I protect you
Here…
The voice of the text does not clarify who that other is. There, the writer can play perfectly with the possibility of imagining multiple others, multiple affects, offering the listener a point of identification of her own experience.
This kind of mess that is carried within is undoubtedly a deep love experience, but it has the echoes of a different density than a simple infatuation.
The construction of a historical memory that evokes different stages of life, growth, maturity, can also put us facing the scene of an image of maternal-paternal love, the nurturing figure, the being that feeds, the source of life, the energy that moves.
Perhaps it could evoke the identity of the land, of the terroir, the utopia of a Latin America that is woven from and to the roots.
Perhaps it is only love as the primal force, love as the principle of life that always maintains the memory saved from oblivion, and that when it has a name, what a name! is written on surfaces impossible.
It is not thus a love of the passions, but from the deep consciousness of the historical and internalized experience of it in the subject.
About Natalia Lafourcade
Natalia Lafourcade is a Mexican singer and songwriter born in 1984 in Mexico City. She has also excelled as a music producer, designer, and activist.
Her parents have been musicians with an important artistic and educational career. Her father, Gastón Lafourcade Valdenegro, has been a professor at UNAM and at the Autonomous University of Querétaro. Her mother, a graduate pianist, created and developed a comprehensive human and musical education method called the Macarsi Method. She herself trained Natalia in this method as part of a rehabilitation process after an accident with a horse.
It was thanks to producer Loris Ceroni that Natalia managed to record her first CD, released in 2002. Since then, Natalia has had a prolific and very active career, already reaching a list of several studio albums released, as well as her live albums and special collaborations with other artists.
Among the most important discs we can mention:
- Natalia Lafourcade (2002)
- Home (2005)
- The four seasons of love (2007)
- Hu hu hu (2009)
- Divine Woman (2012)
- Up to the root (2015)
- Muses (2017)
Interpreted the theme Remember me of the movie Coconut along with the American singer and music producer named Miguel. The theme was an Oscar winner.
In addition, for Latin America, Natalia recorded a solo version of this song that was included in the soundtrack disc, although not in the film.
She has been the recipient of different national and international awards, including several Latin Grammys.
You can see the official video in the following link:
