Black diva on the rise! Singer IZA wins MultiShow music award, releases powerful new video and is nominated for 2018 Latin Grammy Award
By Marques Travae
It’s great to see the ascension of an artist we’ve followed since the beginning. And needless to say, singer IZA is clearly living up to the praise she received from legendary singer Alcione when she said that “the Brazilian people deserved an artist that (she) is.”
Having made enormous advances in her career since first gaining fame in a number of YouTube videos doing cover versions of songs by other artists, IZA’s live performances, sharing the stage and studio with well-known Brazilian and international artists is really beginning to pay off.
At the 25th annual Prêmio Multishow (Multishow Awards) held on September 25th, in the Jeunesse Arena, in Rio de Janeiro, IZA’s star illuminated twice, first for her winning in the category of “Melhor Música” (best song) for “Pesadão” with Marcelo Falcão, former lead singer of the popular band O Rappa. Besides that, the woman born Isabela Cristina Corrêa Lima also lit up the stage with her performance of her hits “Dona de Mim” and “Ginga”, the latter of which she shared the stage with popular rapper Rincon Sapiência.
But like a train in motion, IZA keeps on coming. Last Friday (28th), the rising diva released the new video for her latest single, one of the songs she performed at the Prêmio Multishow and the title cut of her debut album, “Dona de Mim”. And the video is most definitely worth the view. IZA has spoken boldly about her thoughts on race, representation and being a black woman in a society with so many issues of race at its core, and with “Dona”, IZA is clearly making a statement on these issues. The video clearly issues a statement of the strength of the black woman but features a number of inspiring as well as thought-provoking images.
The setting of the video switches back and forth between a house, a church, a classroom and a courtroom. The classroom scene will make you take a pause as it shows the teacher helping her students fall to ground as the room is sprayed with a hailstorm of gunfire. IZA appears in the scene as a sort of invisible figure observing the violence, dressed in a military uniform, as she calmly sings the lyrics to the song.
In another scene, the singer is shown dressed in white, in the middle of a jury composed by all white men, wearing a beret that one might interpret as a nod to 60s/70s revolutionaries, the Black Panthers. The video also features IZA singing in a capella in the middle of an all-black gospel choir. No doubt, with this video statement, IZA is clearly attempting to take her place alongside a number of other well-known young, black, empowered female singers, both American as well as Brazilian, particularly another young star who has risen from poverty to the heights of fame and fortune, Ludmilla. Both IZA’s music video and her performance, complete with gospel choirs, choreography and guest rapper appearance are reminiscent of something one might expect on the American BET Awards. And why not? IZA clearly has Black Star Power!
If I were to end this story here, the above report would be enough to solidify IZA’s place in the world of powerful, talented, beautiful black female singers, but the icing on the cake has to be the fact that IZA was recently informed that she, like Ludmilla last year, has been nominated for a Latin Grammy Award in the category of “Melhor Álbum de Pop Contemporâneo em Língua Portuguesa” (Best Album of Contemporary Pop in the Portuguese Language) for her album Dona de Mim.
As one might expect, the singer was overjoyed to learn of her first nomination for a Latin Grammy. Sharing her reaction through her Instagram, she asked, “Do you know how we get when we discover that we were nominated for a Grammy? On the floor. Literally,” she commented.
The Latin Grammys will be held on November 15th, in Las Vegas in the United States.
Good for her, I hope she continues to that music artist Brazilians deserve.