Singer-songwriter Mariel Villagra, who performed in Chile as Mariel and later in Mexico as Mariel Mariel, has been a figure in a generation populated by female voices and solo artists in the 2000s.

Her beginnings showed her with a rock-focused alternative pop accent, with her debut album No me despierten! (2007), but when she moved to Mexico City she ended up delineating a style of Latin and urban mixes, with a work of greater projection such as Foto pa ti (2015), which installed the musical concept of "flow latino": music from the big Latin American cities.

Trained in repertoires and mixtures of folk roots and Latin American fusion since her first steps, around 1999 she appeared as backing vocalist and flautist in the band of her father, the saxophonist and composer Pedro Villagra (founding musician of Santiago del Nuevo Extremo), known as Pedroband. Shortly afterwards she recorded vocals on the album Otredad (2004). At the same time, Mariel Villagra had been working on an electronic drum and bass project called Ultrafat Soundsystem, but by the time she decided to start recording a solo album, her music was oriented towards pop and electric guitar rock. There he added pseudonyms such as Lolita, Estrella and Moway.

To present No me despierten!, released by the Azul label in 2007, Mariel used a band with guitarist and singer-songwriter Javier Barría, and jazz drummer Andy Baeza, among others. The album was produced by Luis Tata Bigorra (Los Tetas, Funk Attack) and featured an authorial repertoire of introspective songs ("Enredadera", "Aconséjame", "No puedo estar" and "No me despierten!"). In 2008, Mariel started an internationalisation in Mexico, where she began to try her hand at music without a rock band, through a pop of keyboards and bases, and even with a corps de ballet on stage, which brought her closer to the AM Latin pop divas, such as Yuri, Alejandra Guzmán and Gloria Trevi.

In Mexico City she performed with other Chileans, such as Pali, Daniela Aleuy, Andrés Landon and later Mon Laferte, for whom she wrote the song "Flor de amapola" (included in the 2013 album Tornasol). He also worked in the studio with Chilean producer Arturo Medina and returned to electronic base procedures to produce an electropop album entitled La música es buena (2011), in which Mexican music stars such as Leonel García (of the duo Sin Bandera) and Natalia Lafourcade collaborated.

La Matria: feminine strength
Since the release of that album, Mariel Mariel has increased her presence in Mexico with works such as her duet video clip with the aforementioned Natalia Lafourcade ("Nos llevamos tan bien") and her participation in La chamana, a tribute album to the singer Chavela Vargas announced for September 2012. In 2015 he released his first album that is one hundred per cent "chilango", that is, with roots, identity and belonging to Mexico City. Foto pa ti was produced by Andrés Landon and won him the 2016 Pulsar Award in Chile in the Urban Music category.

On her return to Chile in 2017, she headed the creation of the La Matria collective, whose objective was to promote women in music and advocate for their visibility on stage. In this sense, she organised activities such as Matria Fest, a festival that in December 2019 had a major milestone with the 4,000 people who attended the Juan Antonio Ríos Stadium in Independencia. There, Ana Tijoux, Pascuala Ilabaca, Consuelo Schuster, Princesa Alba, Mariel Mariel herself and, for the first time on stage in front of an audience, the collective LasTesis, a group that with "Un violador en tu camino" triggered a protest song that became worldwide. At the same time, Mariel Mariel reappeared as author and singer with "Sacar los tambores", a hard-hitting song in the midst of the social upheaval in Chile, with the collaboration of Cecilia, a fundamental figure for the La Matria collective.
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