Luedji Luna - Um Corpo No Mundo

The Guardian 80

(Sterns)

This twentysomething Brazilian broke big in 2016 with the title track of this debut, launched through YouTube with an arthouse video that revealed a singer with a model’s looks, a dancer’s grace and a sharply honed political sensibility. Um Corpo No Mundo (A Body in the World) is a call for racial and gender respect, delivered with sultry insouciance to an airy samba melody and a simple backing of guitar, bass and percussion.

The album, much garlanded in Brazil, follows suit, celebrating an Afro-Brazilian heritage felt keenly via Luna’s politically active parents (who gave her her African first name) and her northern hometown of Salvador de Bahia, Brazil’s most “African” region. That legacy is most apparent on Banho de Folhas (Bathed in Leaves), with its soukous guitar, and in the conga-led Bahian rhythms elsewhere.