Luedji Luna it planted and reaped good fruit even when all the doors were closed to music lately. As they say, there were two pregnancies in just one year. In early 2020, the singer began producing her second album while giving birth to her only child, Dayo, from her marriage to rapper Zudizilla.
The baby was born in July and already in October 2020 she “gave birth” the album “Bom Even é Estar Debaixa D’água”, produced by her and by the Kenyan guitarist Kato Change. A partnership that worked so well that the work was nominated for a Latin Grammy, in the category “Best Brazilian Popular Music Album”. The awards take place this Thursday (18), at a ceremony in Las Vegas.
Led by Brazilian actress Carolina Dieckmann and Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Kany García, the event could have the presence of Luedji Luna in a double dose: before the trophies are handed out, she takes the stage with Kato for a pocket show.
“I wouldn’t say that [a indicação] It was a surprise because this second album, by itself, brought me a lot of pressure and generated a lot of expectations. So, I did a job knowing this responsibility, especially when you do a very successful first. I did my best, I did my best,” says Luedji in a Skype conversation with CNN – the singer is already in Las Vegas.
“Of course I was extremely happy and overjoyed with the nomination for the award. This year, with my return, I’ve already played a few shows, but the Grammy was the consolidation”, celebrates.
Part of the album was recorded in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, while the other was produced in São Paulo, the city that the Salvadoran woman chose to live. Luedji was born in the capital of Bahia, the daughter of civil servant parents, and never had a musical reference within the family, except for an uncle who had a reggae band and his father who played on weekends with friends. She says that, since childhood, she felt the spark of music blazing inside her chest and, when she was studying law, she decided that she would sing.
“I had a sadness that I didn’t know what the name was, whether it was depression or melancholy. I tried to solve it with joy, pleasure, I went to shows and drank, but nothing filled me. To cure it, I started to do therapy, yoga, reiki and, as I got better, the call came”, he recalls.
“It just came to my mind ‘I’m going to sing. I don’t know how it’s going to be or how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to do it.’ It was really an awakening. I associate a lot with these processes of self-knowledge, I looked inside and my spirit led me, saying ‘look, this is your way’. Afterwards, it all happened in five years because, in fact, it was supposed to happen”, believes Luedji.
Unlike other female singers from Bahia, who are already very successful within axé music, Luedji wanted to bet on Brazilian popular music and began to get involved with jazz, MPB and musicalities of African origin, influences that make up the current album.
She explains that this record is a message about love from the perspective of black women, who have this feeling denied in a white normative society.
“Racism has deprived our humanity in that sense too. If you have a demonized, objectified and animalized body, that body is not worthy of love. The proposal is to reconstitute this feeling, bring it closer, tell our stories through our eyes”, he argues.
The singer continues. “Although cliché, it is a theme that is politicized on this record. My work has compositions by me and other black women, with speeches and poetics. We are in a country where our voices are muted. A black woman is not expected to know, have knowledge and produce writing. So this is a record that breaks paradigms on many levels. Going to the Grammys with this particular work is very symbolic.”
Marcia Shot, a singer with a 35-year career in Bahia, knows her countryman’s work well. She applauds Luedji’s Grammy nomination and claims that the artist has reaped what she has sown since she released her first album, “Um Corpo no Mundo”, which was created with a wealth of feelings and depth.
“She is a black woman, full of history and her own experiences, with her references and, of course, with her unique way of singing. Bahia has a vast number of black artists, singers, songwriters and musicians, who made and make art beautifully and fully. Seeing, hearing and feeling Luedji puts us in a place of joy. We are happy to see ourselves stamped on the charts, on people’s mouths, and that’s really good, as we need to have representation and spotlights for this vast number of artists”, he stresses.
Black female representation
Historically, Brazilian black women have always occupied a diva’s place in music, with singers and interpreters, mainly in samba, such as Leci Brandão, Beth Carvalho and Mrs. Ivone Lara. But MPB is still a place of dispute, according to Luedji. The artist believes that she is part of a generation that is changing this paradigm, especially as a composer.
The owner of the hit “Banho de Folhas” says that black women are appropriating their own speech and all possible spaces within the music. For this reason, she explains that the second work came at a special moment in many ways.
“I think that if I win, it will be a stamp that Brazilian popular music is changing and contemplating other bodies and discourses. It will be something very beautiful! The nomination is already huge, but if I win it will be a milestone. Let’s say that these changes that have been happening on the internet, with new names, are making a difference and building a new history in Brazilian popular music”, he believes.
Asked about black female representation within the Grammy, Luedji prefers to say that she does not make music and does not conduct her career with the objective of representing black women. She reaffirms that this theme has always been important to her, but recommends that each of these women look inside themselves in search of their own qualities and focus on the dreams they have.
The artist emphasizes that she did not have great references within MPB in Bahian music and did not see a career as a singer as something possible.
“When you think about representation, I admit and understand that it is important, but it is incomplete. Black women are not a homogeneous mass, we have individualities and other points to add. I am from the Northeast, thin, cisgender, I had a father and a mother, I studied at a private school, in short, many crossings that are part of my music. The ideal, for me, is that every black woman is able to speak for herself.”
Even so, Marcia Shot is thrilled to know that a black woman from Bahia can be the owner of a golden gramophone. She says that Bahia has a wealth, a musical plurality that needs to be known, as there are many women, interpreters, composers, instrumentalists and always with so little visibility.
“The internet and digital have brought many possibilities for projection, but they have also brought challenges. Being seen, heard and appreciated in this whirlwind is no easy task and Luedji arrived, conquered – woman, black woman, mother, singer, songwriter, entrepreneur, in other words, a reflection of black women in Bahia and Brazil”, she celebrates.
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Reference: CNN Brasil
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