Q&A: La Muchacha

La Muchacha came to prominence in 2021 when protesters began singing her song, ‘No Azara’, during a national strike over tax reforms. As protests continued, La Muchacha began performing it at demonstrations, lines like ‘In this land that is mine, I don’t have to suck bullets’ resonating with crowds sick of the police brutality that arrived in retaliation.

La Muchacha grew up in Manizales, Colombia, and released her debut album, Polen, in 2018. From the off, she became known for writing direct, raw, emotional songs that centred marginalised voices and the injustice of inequality. She moved to Bogotá to further her music career, where her stripped back, guitar-led songs stood out among the capital’s indie, rock and tropical scenes.

Last year, she released the Ruda EP, which showed a different side to her music, seeing her embrace hip-hop for the first time, though with the same venom and emotive delivery as her previous work. As she prepares to perform in London as part of the Las Poderosas – Colombian Queens showcase, we speak to La Muchacha about her musical upbringing, protest songs and performing with other important Colombian voices.

What was your upbringing like in Manizales?

I grew up in a very particular environment that was somewhere between the neighbourhood and the mountains. There was a lot of forest around, so my childhood was a mix of street life, play and exploration in nature. We would make bonfires, invent things… It was a very stimulating upbringing, and very safe.

‘La Serpiente’ was the first song that you wrote. What was the inspiration behind it?

‘La Serpiente’ came after a long walk with a friend in the hills of Manizales. I kept seeing snakes that had been run over on the road, dried by the sun, and that image stayed with me. I began thinking about this cultural distortion where the snake is portrayed as something evil, as a symbol of immorality or disobedience. That never made sense to me. The snake is a powerful, life-giving being, deeply present in many ancestral mythologies. So, I wanted to reclaim it as something sacred, not something malicious. It became connected to transformation, to the changing nature of the feminine.

Can you tell us about ‘No Azara’, which became such a well-known song during the 2021 national strike in Colombia?

‘No Azara’ is, for me, the most important, and the most painful song I’ve written. It’s the only one I have tattooed on my body. It was born from the stories of the community of San José de Apartadó [members of the community were murdered by paramilitaries under the watch of the Colombian army, who denied their involvement], and it speaks about the courage it takes to defend the land – but a kind of courage that shouldn’t be necessary. Of course, we should defend life, territory, dignity, memory… but not in the middle of violence. So, the song exists within that tension: between deep admiration for that strength and the discomfort, even anger, that anyone should have to die to defend what should be a basic right.

Was there a tradition of folk or protest music in your family?

There wasn’t a direct tradition of folk music in my family, but my mother listened to artists like Mercedes Sosa, Violeta Parra, Inti-Illimani, Piero, León Gieco – so there was a strong Latin American influence, very political and emotional.

Ruda has seen you move away from the acoustic guitar to hip-hop beats. Why did you make this change?

Ruda is a very special project for me because it comes from a deep connection I’ve had with rap since I was very young. My older brother introduced me to that world, and those songs stayed with me ever since. I wanted to create this EP as a tribute to those rhythms, to that way of writing, to the construction of a beat, and also to explore composing without the guitar – to understand that there are other ways of making songs.

Las Poderosas brings you together with Adriana Lucía and Nidia Góngora – three distinct voices from different regions and traditions in Colombia. What does it mean to share a stage under that banner?

It means a lot. I feel that as women singers, we’re not always as connected as we could be, and these encounters allow us to relate from a more human and closer place. I feel very happy and honoured to share with such powerful women, who are also very clear in their political positions and deeply coherent in what they do. That resonates strongly with me.

INTERVIEW BY RUSS SLATER JOHNSON

+ Las Poderosas – Colombian Queens, featuring La Muchacha, takes place on May 4 at the Barbican, London