Liniker Is Still Dreaming

<p><em>The Brazilian singer Liniker caught our correspondent Harrison Malkin’s attention in 2018 when her group “Liniker e os Caramelows” were featured on NPR’s Tiny Desk. Since then, Harrison’s followed her career and has been obsessed with their blissful track, “Calmô.”</em></p> <p><em>On July 19 at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park, less than a mile from Central Park, Liniker took the stage as part of Brazil Week to perform her latest album “CAJU.” The overwhelmingly Portuguese-speaking crowd lit up at the sight of her. It was a magical show on a steamy summer night. </em></p> <p><em>But before the show, Harrison chatted with Liniker about her album and much more.</em><br></p> <p><em>All photos by Larissa Kreili.<br></em></p> <p>Liniker’s sipping a latte in the courtyard of the Park Lane hotel. “I think all my life I've been moved by my dreams,” she said. “[In] my room at this hotel, I have a view of Central Park. I'm from a city in the countryside of São Paulo. This was a dream [for me].”<br></p> <p>The sun shone strongly, almost spotlighting us, and that meant something too. “The sun is bright because something bigger is happening,” she said.</p> <p>On the second track of her new album, <em>CAJU, Liniker de Barros Ferreira Campos</em>, or Liniker as she’s more widely known, sings:</p> <p>What we really need</p> <p>Is to learn how to dream</p> <p>The title track describes a journey from Japan to Brazil – countries that have a deep connection to each other. Liniker sees <em>CAJU</em> as both the album of her “dreams,” and a “snapshot,” of her life as it were last year — thinking about, in part, love and fear, travel and home.</p> <p>“This is the story I have to share today. Thirty years from now, when I have maybe ten more albums, I’ll listen to this one and remember what it felt like to be 29…for a long time, I felt trapped in the need to prove who I am, to seek validation…“CAJU” was born from my desire to see myself with more kindness,” she said.</p> <p>She told me that since turning 30-years-old, she’s felt more of a desire to find room for herself outside of art, and to choose what she actually wants to do with her time — and it seems to be making her music stronger. <br></p> <p>“ I'm trying to have more space to live my own life without the cameras, without the crew… Not just rushing myself to do everything that I am invited [to do] or do everything that everybody wants me to do, but what I want to do, where I want to live, where I want to stay. I think it’s a decision time of my life,” Liniker said.<br></p> <p>But my conversation with Liniker started where it ended — with dreams. Because what are dreams, if not imaginations of new possibilities and realities — in music and beyond. Freud, in “The Interpretation of Dreams,” put it like this: “dream is the dreamer's own psychical act.”</p> <p>“Everything has happened because I dream a lot, and this is beautiful,” Liniker said.</p> <p>When I first sat down with Liniker, I talked about how the night before I took melatonin for the first time in a long while. And after I woke up, I felt drowsy and confused. I don’t know why I revealed this, but I did. She nodded, and told me about experiencing melatonin-related nightmares. I appreciated that confession, but I wanted to know about her other dreams.</p> <p>“ I'm always connected with things in the unconscious,” Liniker, who was honored in 2023 as "Immortal" by the Brazilian Academy of Culture, said. “I've been wondering a lot. And my mom allowed me to do everything I wanted. And this makes me more brave with myself and more courageous too.”</p> <p>Liniker was raised by a single mother — Ângela — in a musical household. Her family got together to play samba rock. In an extended interview with <a href="https://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2015/11/12/cultura/1447331706_038108.html">El País</a>, Liniker spoke to how supportive her mother was during childhood: “I always wanted to wear my mother's clothes, but I didn't, especially in Araraquara, a small town, because I would be harassed.”</p> <p>“I'd go to a thrift store, want a dress, an earring, but I wouldn't buy them...I was fine with myself; the problem was the city…I started wearing lipstick and skirts and going out in those clothes,” Liniker went on to say. </p> <p>“Then I went to Araraquara for the first time thinking, "I'm going to show them who I am." An uncle of mine questioned me, wanted to know what was going on, and gave me a piece of his clothing —"so you know how a man dresses." I thanked him but said I wouldn't wear it. And my mother defended me: "Leave Liniker alone; he's an artist.”’</p> <p>That support paid off, as Liniker continues creating art and touring – playing “CAJU” throughout Brazil and Portugal this summer and fall. And she continues dreaming. “The day I stop to dream, I can die,” Liniker said.</p> <figure><iframe loading="lazy" width="500" height="281" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/vXgUJWo_or0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></figure> <p><br></p>