Bom Mesmo É Estar Debaixo d'Água

On her second album Bahian Luedji Luna has brought on Kenya's Kato Change as producer, shifting from the dreamy soundscapes of her debut to a bolder sound, pushing her voice and instrumentation to the fore. This may not just be for aesthetic reasons as the album carries with it an aim of humanising black Brazilian women, Luna writing about love with herself as the protagonist, not the victim. It's a message suited to this more direct sound, with Luna working through gorgeous ballads, like the piano-led ‘Lençóis’, and ‘Tirania’, which are amplified by swathes of strings but also carry a percussive bite. Elsewhere, she tries to find a sweet spot between jazz fusion, Candomblé-inspired Brazilian pop and African polyrhythms, with the twirling West African guitars of ‘Origami’, as with ‘Banho de Folhas’ (the undoubted hit from her debut), giving the album a moment of levity, frivolity even.

When the gentle jazz-funk of ‘Chororô’ segues into a cover of ‘Ain't Got No’, Luna's ideological kinship with Nina Simone is made evident. Like Simone, she is fighting to be a complex individual in an industry that would rather she toe the line of subjugation. On this second album, it's clear she's up for the fight.