Lima, Peru – Strolling up the neoclassical steps of Peru’s Supreme Court with a technicolour Indigenous scarf draped more than a person shoulder, Lenin Tamayo is keenly aware of the energy of symbolism.
The 23-yr-previous Peruvian singer has shot to viral fame in latest months — earning millions of sights on TikTok — thanks to his novel style of new music, which fuses influences from across continents and cultures.
He blends Korean beats, Andean folklore and subversive imagery, in some scenarios taking purpose at the administration of President Dina Boluarte by his tunes.
“I want to inspire many others,” mentioned Tamayo, who sings in Quechua, an Indigenous language spoken by the Incas and nevertheless employed by an approximated 10 million people today across South The usa. “I want like to unite us, to unite our people today.”
Tamayo’s new music, which adds a Quechua twist to Korea’s K-pop tunes, has been dubbed “Q-pop”. Each tune from his debut album Amaru, produced in August, is inspired by Incan mythology. The title alone refers to a mythic double-headed snake.
In his performances, Tamayo dances flamboyantly — applying the highly choreographed dance moves of a K-pop star — to a backing of traditional Andean musical devices these types of as pan flutes and rain sticks.
While he was born in the cash Lima, Tamayo was elevated in the culture of the Andes Mountains, the ancestral property of the Incas and other Indigenous teams.
As the only baby of Yolanda Pinares, an Andean artist who sings in Spanish and Quechua, Tamayo grew up listening to a wide variety of Latin American folk music.
He frequently waited for his mom backstage, as she juggled phase efficiency with busking and bartending.
Pinares wove Andean tradition into Tamayo’s everyday existence. She would even pack his college lunchbox with foodstuff from the Peruvian highlands these kinds of as “cancha” — toasted corn kernels — and “tarwi”, an Andean legume.
But individuals lunchtime treats lifted eyebrows between his schoolmates in the funds. That, blended with his timid demeanour and atypical looks — a skinny body, bushy eyebrows and pronounced cheekbones — led to bullying.
“I felt this internalised racism,” he explained. “I was timid as a boy.”
Music has very long been a way for Tamayo to process his struggles. He 1st took to the phase at age 7 with his mom. By age 14, he was producing music for her. Later, he learned to use social media to endorse her get the job done.
But he went in his personal course when he started to pen his personal songs at age 22.
“I was born on the stage,” Tamayo stated. “But it was various when I started to write my personal tunes.”
Departing from his mother’s folk-centred seem, Tamayo’s new music embraced modern influences like the genre-bending stylings of Spanish singer Rosalía and K-pop icons Girls’ Era and BTS.
But Tamayo mixes people inspirations with the appears and rhythms he grew up with. “I preferred to reclaim my id with my terms and my compositions, to make clear exactly where I arrived from.”
That songs has struck a chord in the Andes and further than: On TikTok, he has 5.3 million likes and extra than 227,200 followers.
Americo Mendoza-Mori, founder of the Quechua Initiative on World wide Indigeneity at Harvard University, credited Tamayo’s recognition in component to the point that Quechua speakers seldom are represented in media.
“Even though a person in 10 men and women in Peru talk Quechua, they are treated as a minoritised group, as second-class citizens,” stated Mendoza-Mori. “That dates again to colonisation and has been reinforced by violence versus them in the late 20th century.”
Mendoza-Mori argued that Tamayo is portion of a movement of growing cultural pride, especially among youthful Quechua speakers who are normally the to start with in their families to transfer to towns and study at college.
“Lenin’s tale is the tale of many younger people today residing in urban spaces affirming their society,” he stated. “Not just in Peru, but in Bolivia, Ecuador and over and above. It is a reminder how Indigenous [peoples] negotiate and adapt their presence and voices on global phases, how they defy stereotypes that Indigeneity is a factor of the previous.”
At the exact time, Tamayo is also harnessing music as a resource for political change.
Over the earlier 12 months, deadly protests have shaken Peru considering the fact that the impeachment and removing of previous remaining-wing President Pedro Castillo, a transfer critics have called a coup d’état. His vice president, Boluarte, was rapidly sworn in to exchange him.
Even so, Castillo appreciated sturdy backing in rural and Indigenous areas, and quite a few of his supporters took to the streets to express outrage at his December ouster.
A lot more than 60 people today have died in the demonstrations in the months since, with hundreds a lot more injured as authorities forces clashed with protesters.
A distinctive rapporteur with the United Nations explained the violence disproportionately impacted Indigenous communities. And the human legal rights team Amnesty Global uncovered proof of “racial and socio-financial bias” in the government’s use of deadly force.
Tamayo himself participated in the protests, quite a few of which referred to as for a new structure and early elections to exchange Boluarte and the opposition-led Congress.
He also tackled the violence in a music video clip before this 12 months, depicting law enforcement beating protesters and chasing a female who escapes via an Andean forest.
Boluarte has come underneath fire for her government’s response to the demonstrations, but she has refused to stage down. And inspite of first support for transferring elections forward, she has since backed absent from that proposal, indicating the problem was “closed”.
“The president has created promises that she should keep,” Tamayo reported. “Otherwise, it is a betrayal.”
Alonso Gurmendi, a Peruvian lecturer in intercontinental relations at King’s College or university London, believes artists like Tamayo are opening new spaces for political discourse, amplifying the simply call for alter.
“People are realising that it won’t be plenty of to just go to the streets and protest,” he claimed. “Lenin is channelling that with his new music. He is galvanising social improve and a grassroots motion as a result of songs and artwork.”
Tamayo likewise acknowledges the energy of new message boards — particularly social media platforms like TikTok — to deliver modify.
“Social networks can democratise,” he said. “It’s a liberty. It is a result in for hope.”
But modify requires time, as Tamayo himself admits. “This is not only a beneficial information,” he said of his audio. “It’s a battle.”