Meet Amun-há, the world’s first non-binary cheesy singer

“Because as much as the tacky is for everyone, I think it was lacking representation”. This is the diagnosis of Amun-há, a self-proclaimed Recife native who was the first non-binary in the brega scene in the capital of Pernambuco.

In LGBTI+ visibility month, the Brazil in fact Pernambuco spoke with the artist who talks about her background in music and the need to make the cultural scene more inclusive for the community.

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Brasil de Fato Pernambuco: Amun-há, how and when did you start singing?

Amun-ha: Like other female singers, the church played a very big role in this flow of singing. I started singing in the Catholic Church when I was baptized in the Catholic Church, when I was six, seven years old, and then I started singing because I wanted to sing, I wasn’t in the choir or anything like that… I started singing, I liked the hymns, but nobody ever made me sing because I was that “effeminate fagot” and then I never went up front to sing, but I started to sing there.

In my childhood I started living in Rio de Janeiro and became a Seventh-day Adventist and then at church they told me that I sang and they put me to sing and then I started to work more vocally, vocal technique and learn a little. It was the first place I started singing. After that, I started doing theater and then, in the theater, I started to detach myself from the church and transform this corner.

I always listened to international music, pop music, national music too and then after I entered university I started to become more professional and decided that I was going to sing my songs about whatever I wanted to talk about, so I’ve been singing for a few years, but more professionally like this since 2019, when I released “Quem vai Salva”, which is my first song.

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BdF PE: Do you identify yourself as “the non-binary brega” and what was it like for you to enter the world of brega funk in Recife?

Amun-ha: I always liked Brega and Brega Funk is Brega’s “baby”, right? At the moment it is the musical flow variant of the most recent Brega, which is more youthful, which is from our generation after 2010, 2012, so brega funk is very recent.

And then thinking about this musical flow, because I always thought I needed to be part of a scene, a style, an axis, today I no longer think like that anymore, I think that people who compose, who create music, we can sing whatever musical style, but I chose brega funk to be my kick in music because I like brega funk, because I love it, but because I couldn’t find other experiences that represented me.

Because as much as the brega is for everyone, I think it was lacking representation, as well as the term non-binary… The term non-binary is something that comes from outside that is not talked about, that is not discussed in communities, in peripheries, in places, I think musically bringing it up makes people think “what is non-binary?”. Let’s find out or go to a show to find out and I called myself Brega’s non-binary and today I have an album.

I am the first person, the first transvestite and non-binary to release a Brega Funk album that is not only Brega Funk, which has Bregadeira, has Brega Romântico, it’s a mixture, but the main axis is Brega Funk. This scene was not an invitation, this scene to participate, to be a cheesy funk singer, it was more of an invasion, an occupation of this space and I feel good, but I feel that the scene does not open doors for me.

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BdF PE: We have recently seen a growth of artists drag queens and transvestites gaining prominence. But how do you evaluate the appreciation of these artists in the local scene?

Amun-ha: I think being an independent artist, independent of gender and sexuality, is quite complicated because it’s not as simple as people think it is to be an artist. It’s an intense daily job that goes from our clothes, our makeup, music production, video clip production, concert production, working with the band. So I think the investment for LGBT people who are playing in the music flow needs to be more valued.

We’ve had LGBT artists in Brega Funk, Brega and other musical axes for a while and unfortunately it’s not something new like that, you know? When you think that when I called myself non-binary in brega there were no non-binary in brega and today by my count we already have four, five non-binary people who are singing Brega Funk too. We already had a history of cross-dressing at Brega Romântico, there is Paulinha Lopes who is a singer at Takitá, who was the first trans woman singer of brega a while ago but… it existed, always existed, always had, but this appreciation was never so strong like that.

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BdF PE: It’s LGBT Pride month and I would like you to invite people to know more about your music and what you produce.

Amun-ha: Anyone who wants to take a look at what I’ve done in terms of work can go to my instagram @amun.ha and there you can see future shows, videos of shows that have already been, you’ll get to know some of the people who work with me, of my ballet, of the boys who play with me. You’ll see a bit of my visual identity, how I change with the flow of time… And you can find me on Youtube, on the Amun-há channel as well and on Spotify, on Deezer, and you can follow me and keep an eye out because new things will come this year and we are working on that.

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Source: BdF Pernambuco

Editing: Vanessa Gonzaga