(CNN Spanish) – The name of Javiera Mena is a reference for the LGBTQ community in Latin America. Even more so …
(CNN Spanish) – The name of Javiera Mena is a reference for the LGBTQ community in Latin America. Even more so the musical.
Since its inception, Mena has sung about lesbian love, while fighting to defeat the stigma around that word. Her battle for the visibility of the LGBTQ community, of which she is a part, has led her to be considered an icon.
The Chilean singer-songwriter presented her Extended Play «Entusiasmo» a month ago, a hint of what will be the album she plans to release in 2022.
The production includes the singles “Diva” with Chico Blanco, a song to pay tribute to the LGBTQ community, and “Dos”, a ballad that tells the story of a woman in love with two other women.
Towards the normalization of lesbian love in music
But is it easy to write and sing love songs between women?
“There are few songs of a lesbian woman speaking to another woman. There are very few of the same in the mainstream, or now there must be more, surely I am not finding out and there will be more and more, “Mena told Zona Pop CNN.
«In pop music there was always the gay man. We have great references, Freddie Mercury, George Michael, Elton John, even in Latin America, Juan Gabriel, who although what is seen is not asked, what is seen is not asked! But we don’t have many references for lesbian women in Latin America and neither in the world, ”adds the singer-songwriter.
“I like to contribute to that thing as luminous too, to look at the love between two women as something beautiful, luminous, something pop, something that can convey good feelings, not just like complaining that the world discriminates against us,” he says.
Representation in Latin America
And certainly the representation of the lesbian community in the musical area in Latin America is scarce.
It was not until adulthood that Chavela Vargas made it known that she was a lesbian. And if we go to the present time, we can think of singers like Kany García or Joy Huerta (of the duo Jesse & Joy), but what has happened that in recent years more artists have made their sexual orientation public?
“I believe that the macho model with which we were raised is in decline,” says Mena.
«Being (machismo) as in an earthquake, already collapsing, obviously the things that this model repressed are born, which was the different thing, which were the colors, which was the pen, which were the lesbians, which was the woman who had can. So as this model is in decline, it is born like all this diversity that is androgyny, “he adds.
«It is interesting to be in this moment. I just like living it because we see how a very powerful paradigm in which my grandparents grew up is collapsing. I also grew up in that. Every year that passes is like something else, I think, as more fluid and androgynous in human beings ”, says Mena.
Enthusiasm, the new from Javiera Mena
The Chilean singer presented in May the first chapter of a series of EPs that she will present in 2021 and that will culminate with a record production scheduled for 2022.
And although the songs were not born during the pandemic, but as a result of the social outbreak in Chile at the end of 2019, the production of these five songs was carried out during the mandatory stoppage due to the coronavirus.
How did Javiera Mena find the enthusiasm to make art in the midst of uncertainty?
«With art, with music, books, movies, everything. Human beings value the spaces we have much more, because it was very evident, like that (we were in) turbulent water, as well as all dirty, and you realize that the things that clean a little were art and music, human connections, ”says Mena.
«I believe that the pandemic helped us to value what we had. When you lose what you had, you value it. I also wanted to put a bit of enthusiasm to contribute with my grain of sand to these difficult moments “, he adds.
At what point were the songs born?
«They were born before the pandemic, and the first song called Flashback is very connected to the pandemic and we had not thought about it. The video clip is super mega apocalyptic and it also has to do with this Akira aesthetic, from the Japanese series, which is a world that is already ending, it is collapsing. It was easy to realize what the world was in and to be able to transfer it, in my case, to aesthetics. But the EP, the songs, the lyrics were born prior to the pandemic, which was during the social outbreak in Chile, in the middle of the social outbreak, ”explains Mena.
Every song of Enthusiasm, laid bare
«Flashback»
Javiera Mena: «Flashback, which was prior to the pandemic, I was going around Mexico and Argentina, composing with different people, because I have many albums and now I liked the figure of composing with others. This song was composed with Luis Jiménez (Venezuelan singer-songwriter and producer, member of Los Mesoneros, Arawato and Lagos). I have a notebook where I write down concepts and one of those concepts was Flashback, I remember déjà vu… it’s a method that I have to compose. So we really liked the word flashback, we felt it with an eighties musicality ».
«It was a song (with which) that I went around the world, because later I came to produce in Madrid with a Swede named Stefan Storm. That is why this sound is also colder, more electronic, that for Latinos it is difficult for us to reach a little more, but we still get there. He gave Stefan that icy Swedish touch from Scandinavia. And that, mixed with my Latin way of singing, my wave. So Flashback happened there and we recorded the video clip in Bogotá ».
«Diva»
Javiera Mena: «It’s very from the community, the truth, I have done the song with Chico Blanco who is also LGBTQ +, me too. The beat it has is super fast, a drag show is perfect for it, because electronic music, house, has a lot of that and that kind of sound that is like a queer wave more than anything, but everyone can enjoy it. DJ and everyone.
«It is a song that is an ode to the dance floor, to the darkness of the night and that in the end still has light, to dance. This song was also created at the time of the social explosion, when we went out to dance at night with all this energy of being in the day protesting and at night one would be hyperventilated and we would go out anyway. And that’s where this lyrics and this song are born ».
“Astral heart”
Javiera Mena: «This is the most sensual song on the EP, I feel it. It is a superrotic song, of desire. When I was composing it, I had in my head something like a beach at night in the desert and it is inspired by the north of Chile, in this thing like desert and at the same time palm trees, that imaginary.
These songs like whispered, spoken, that there were many in the eighties and later like they were lost, but it is my most sensual, more erotic side.
He has a video clip made in the middle of the pandemic. We had to make a virtual reality video clip because there was no way to get together to record, but it was very organic. It was not like those video clips that you can tell they were doing something because there was a pandemic. I worked with some artist friends from Barcelona and we were super happy with the result ».
“Of the”
Javiera Mena: «Two is about a person who is confused because he likes two people at the same time. Thousands of songs talk about this, thousands of books, it is like one of the moments of the human being that generates more conflict, I think, because of how things are raised.
I believe that it will continue to generate it for life, like human conflict, one of the great human conflicts.
We wanted to offer this song – I composed it with Marian Ruzzi – as from another point of view as well, as more purging, cleaning, without guilt, like ‘that’s life,’ he says for a moment, but without blaming himself. She is opening up to the two she loves. This ballad turned out very well, especially in Chile and Mexico ».
«Passion AKA Illusion»
Javiera Mena: «This is the last song, the one that closes the EP. The song is like a 70s soft pop. I feel like it has nothing to do with the record (since) it goes up and ends like a reflection. (This theme) connects what’s coming too.
It is a song that we were inspiring, like the music of Fleetwood Mac, by José Feliciano from the 70s. If you compare this song with Diva, they are like nothing to see, I unite it, my lyrics unite it.
It is a reflection on how illusion is the wind that feeds the passion that is fire ».
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