The home lights had been dimmed in certainly one of Rio’s prime music venues and, because the star of the present ready to take the stage, hundreds of enraptured followers cried out their idol’s title within the darkness: “Liniker! Liniker! Liniker! Liniker!”
It was not, nonetheless, the England striker turned Match of the Day host Gary Lineker the sellout crowd was right here to see. It was Lineker’s Brazilian namesake: a Grammy-winning pop sensation whose mesmerising performances and soul-stirring songs have captured the hearts and minds of thousands and thousands.
“I’ve cherished my title ever since I used to be a child … [it] has such a beautiful sound,” the 29-year-old instructed the Guardian, recalling the way it was given on the suggestion of a footballing-loving uncle.
“Individuals used to actually wrestle to pronounce it. [They would say]: ‘Leeniker … Linker or Lynicker … [or] Linkin Park,” joked the velvet-voiced singer-songwriter. “These days, what they’ve most referred to as me is ‘LinkedIn’: ‘Oh, You’re that singer LinkedIn, aren’t you?’”
Brazil’s Liniker – full title Liniker de Barros Ferreira Campos– was born in Araraquara, a small metropolis north of São Paulo, in 1995, a 12 months after the English goalscorer retired.
In addition to a chart-topping musician revered for an enormous vocal vary, Liniker – who’s black, transgender and has working-class roots – can be a potent image of range and tolerance in a rustic that solely lately emerged from a bleak spell underneath Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right populist infamous for his racist feedback and hostility to minorities.
Liniker, who makes use of feminine pronouns, grew up immersed in black tradition and music underneath the tutelage of a samba-dancing mom who performed in a bunch referred to as Female Contact. Music, not soccer, was her ardour.
“I used to be born into such a musical household. I feel children who develop up in musical households – the place music is performed day-after-day – find yourself growing their ear … I feel I solely grew to become … an artist due to the issues I listened to,” Liniker recalled as she equipped for the second of three sold-out exhibits in Rio earlier this month.
Liniker wrote her first songs in her mid-teens, drawing inspiration from poem-filled notebooks and love letters she by no means dared put up. “From this music began to be born,” stated the artist who went on to check at a celebrated drama faculty in Santo André.
Liniker’s performing desires had been placed on ice in 2015 when her first single, Zero, grew to become an in a single day hit, racking up thousands and thousands of views in just a few days. Since then she has loved a meteoric rise to stardom, performing alongside Brazilian greats together with Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil and the late Elza Soares.
Throughout the ultimate years of her life, Soares – who rose from poverty to develop into certainly one of Brazil’s biggest voices – took Liniker underneath her wing. “Elza was one of many first who wished to get to know me, to do issues with me, to point out curiosity in me,” stated Liniker, who final 12 months took Soares’s place as an “immortal” within the Brazilian academy of tradition.
True to her household’s eclectic listening tastes, Liniker’s music is a hypnotising fusion of kinds – soul, rock, R&B, samba, gospel, disco and Brazilian funk – able to getting her audiences dancing in addition to decreasing them to tears.
Outdoors the brutalist live performance corridor the place Liniker was about to carry out, followers hailed her as an inheritor to music legends reminiscent of Soares. “She represents the Brazilian music of at the moment,” stated Nelson Cavalcante, 28, who had arrived seven hours earlier than doorways opened to ensure his spot on the entrance.
Joshua Lucca, a 19-year-old who was additionally on the entrance of the queue, stated: “I’m a trans man and I’m black and so Liniker’s artwork actually speaks to me as a result of I’m not used to seeing folks like this within the Brazilian media. The sensation it provides me is certainly one of acceptance, you recognize?
“That is life. Individuals stay. Individuals exist. They want area to be who they’re … That’s why I’m right here.”
Vinícius de Assis, a 25-year-old fan, stated: “Liniker is an emblem of power: to come back from the place she got here from and to get the place she acquired. Rattling, the primary black trans [artist] to win a Grammy. That is actually exceptional … She’s synonymous with the concept which you can obtain no matter you need. All you need to do is dream.”
Liniker stated she was dedicated to utilizing her fame to defend Brazil’s black and LGBTQIA+ communities – “In fact it’s actually necessary as an artist to make use of the highlight on you and the microphone in your hand to take a stance on plenty of issues,” she stated – however expressed discomfort at having for years been pigeonholed by the media as “an LGBT artist” whose music appeared secondary to her gender id.
“To be able to interact with my music, they first needed to interact with my gender,” she stated. “All the interviews began: ‘Black, turban-wearing, darkish lipstick, skirt’: discover out who Liniker is!’”
“It was actually tedious and tiresome. There was even a second … we stopped doing interviews … I didn’t need for all the things to be about my gender and for my music to be pushed into the background … as if with a view to champion my music, I first needed to say what it was prefer to be a travesti and a black girl.”
Liniker celebrated how, along with her new album, Caju, receiving rave opinions and incomes her certainly one of Brazil’s prime music awards, her songwriting abilities had taken centre stage.
“For the primary time I really feel my work within the foreground – so we will speak about my music with out having to navigate the query of gender to speak about my fundamental operate … which is my occupation,” she stated, as she sat in a dressing room adorned with pictures of the music stars who carried out there in years passed by.
Subsequent 12 months, Liniker will take the identical present to London’s Electrical Ballroom, giving the Brazilian artist’s English namesake the prospect to affix her fast-growing worldwide fanbase.
“Is he a progressive?” Liniker requested of the footballer she owes her title to.
On studying that the reply was sure, the singer replied: “Properly, you’ll be able to take cost of inviting him [to my show] then – Liniker and Lineker!”
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