Leandro Maia talks about identity, freedom and ‘turned latinice’ in new single ‘Guaipeca’

Guaipeca, new single by the singer and composer from Rio Grande do Sul, Leandro Maia, will be released on digital platforms this Friday. The song begins a series of releases linked to the artist’s new album, which should be released in its entirety in the second half. With a total of 12 songs, Guaipeca: an autobiographical illusionLeandro’s fourth album, is a melting pot of genres, which boils compositions full of love, humor and politics.

Described as “punk-rock-de-galpão”, the single was produced by Luciano Mello, and features Leandro singing a manifesto-song with voice, guitar, drums and megaphone. The guaipeca, after whom the album and the song are named, is celebrated as a symbol of gaucho ancestry and as an alter ego of the artist. Ownerless dog, loose animal, of undefined race: guaipeca is a word of indigenous origin and names the one who refuses to be arrested. Of values, traditions, origins, customs.

“Guaipeca it’s a reflection on identity”, says Leandro. After two decades of career, the musician felt the need to go beyond the limits of his body and transform himself into sound. He gathered everything he built during his life and used it as raw material for the album He took love – for life, for his wife, for his family -, he took humor – the gaucho heritage of guaipequices – and the political cry, present in his life from the beginning and essential vocal chord to continue.

“That describes me as a person. I thought it was time to talk about myself. I had never talked about myself in other works, I had never used the word love in any song, I had never used a more political discourse in songs.”

The album is an autobiography, but an illusory one. The whole exercise of telling a biography is an illusion, as life does not fit into the continuous tracks of the narrative. “Life does not fit into linearity, according to Bourdieu”, he explains. But if life is too big for biography, it fits perfectly in art. She finds in music the space to fly free in the notes, the path to follow her journey and the concreteness to become eternal.

In addition to being life, the album is the voice that celebrates the “turned latinice of the global south”: being Latin, Brazilian and Gaucho. Condemning viralism, Leandro Maia confronts, through art, the idea that everything that comes from outside is better. The work makes room for the Vira-Latin, which decolonizes and deconstructs stereotypes. “Guaipeca is an essentially gaucho word. A gaucho without a boss, without enclosure, nomad. It is the ancestral legacy, instead of the gaucho imaginary imprisoned inside the CTG bombacha”, he says. “Unfortunately, tradition has been contrary to ancestry, which is Guaipeca, and, above all, black and indigenous.”

Guaipeca: an autobiographical illusion brings xote, calypso, blues, punk rock, milonga, a mixture of styles that show what Brazil and the Brazilian are. “I deal with each musical genre as a lens that I can use to tell a story”, says the artist, “but deep down he is a singer-songwriter telling his story.” For the release of the album, the singer has a campaign to finance the vinyl record, receiving donations through the Catarse platform. Being such an important album that carries so much of its existence, Maia would not want to disappear in the digital circuits through which music is listened to today. “I don’t fit into this immateriality,” he explains. “I want this work to take up space.”

Born in Caxias do Sul, Leandro Maia lived in Bento Gonçalves and Porto Alegre. The youngest of the family, at the age of 43, he collects five Azorean Music Awards, in addition to other trophies and awards. Since childhood, music has been very present and encouraged in his life.

“My first memory is musical, I learned to sing before I learned to speak”, he comments. He studied music at Ufrgs, received a master’s degree in Literature from the same university and a Phd in Music from Bath Spa University. She released her first album, verbiagein 2008, followed by mandinho (2012) and Maria Bonita and Other Paths Suite (2014). He is currently a professor at the Arts Center at the Federal University of Pelotas.