Lima, Peru – Strolling up the neoclassical steps of Peru’s Supreme Courtroom with a technicolour Indigenous scarf draped over one shoulder, Lenin Tamayo is keenly conscious of the facility of symbolism.
The 23-year-old Peruvian singer has shot to viral fame in current months — incomes hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok — because of his novel style of music, which fuses influences from throughout continents and cultures.
He blends Korean beats, Andean folklore and subversive imagery, in some circumstances taking goal on the administration of President Dina Boluarte by means of his music.
“I need to encourage others,” mentioned Tamayo, who sings in Quechua, an Indigenous language spoken by the Incas and nonetheless utilized by an estimated 10 million individuals throughout South America. “I need like to unite us, to unite our individuals.”
Tamayo’s music, which provides a Quechua twist to Korea’s Ok-pop music, has been dubbed “Q-pop”. Every track from his debut album Amaru, launched in August, is impressed by Incan mythology. The title itself refers to a mythic double-headed snake.
In his performances, Tamayo dances flamboyantly — utilizing the extremely choreographed dance strikes of a Ok-pop star — to a backing of conventional Andean musical devices comparable to pan flutes and rain sticks.
Though he was born within the capital Lima, Tamayo was raised within the tradition of the Andes Mountains, the ancestral residence of the Incas and different Indigenous teams.
As the one little one of Yolanda Pinares, an Andean artist who sings in Spanish and Quechua, Tamayo grew up listening to a broad vary of Latin American folks music.
He usually waited for his mom backstage, as she juggled stage efficiency with busking and bartending.
Pinares wove Andean custom into Tamayo’s on a regular basis life. She would even pack his faculty lunchbox with meals from the Peruvian highlands comparable to “cancha” — toasted corn kernels — and “tarwi”, an Andean legume.
However these lunchtime snacks raised eyebrows amongst his schoolmates within the capital. That, mixed together with his timid manner and atypical appears — a thin body, bushy eyebrows and pronounced cheekbones — led to bullying.
“I felt this internalised racism,” he mentioned. “I used to be timid as a boy.”
Music has lengthy been a method for Tamayo to course of his struggles. He first took to the stage at age seven together with his mom. By age 14, he was writing songs for her. Later, he discovered to make use of social media to advertise her work.
However he went in his personal route when he began to pen his personal songs at age 22.
“I used to be born on the stage,” Tamayo mentioned. “Nevertheless it was totally different after I started to put in writing my very own songs.”
Departing from his mom’s folk-centred sound, Tamayo’s music embraced up to date influences just like the genre-bending stylings of Spanish singer Rosalía and Ok-pop icons Ladies’ Era and BTS.
However Tamayo mixes these inspirations with the sounds and rhythms he grew up with. “I wished to reclaim my identification with my phrases and my compositions, to clarify the place I got here from.”
That music has struck a chord within the Andes and past: On TikTok, he has 5.3 million likes and greater than 227,200 followers.
Americo Mendoza, founding father of the Quechua Initiative on World Indigeneity at Harvard College, credited Tamayo’s recognition partly to the truth that Quechua audio system hardly ever are represented in media.
“Though one in 10 individuals in Peru converse Quechua, they’re handled as a minoritised neighborhood, as second-class residents,” mentioned Mendoza. “That dates again to colonisation and has been strengthened by violence in opposition to them within the late twentieth century.”
Mendoza argued that Tamayo is a part of a motion of rising cultural satisfaction, notably amongst youthful Quechua audio system who are sometimes the primary of their households to maneuver to cities and research at college.
“Lenin’s story is the story of many younger individuals dwelling in city areas affirming their tradition,” he mentioned. “Not simply in Peru, however in Bolivia, Ecuador and past. It’s a reminder how Indigenous [peoples] negotiate and adapt their presence and voices on international levels, how they defy stereotypes that Indigeneity is a factor of the previous.”
On the identical time, Tamayo can also be harnessing music as a instrument for political change.

Over the previous yr, lethal protests have shaken Peru for the reason that impeachment and removing of former left-wing President Pedro Castillo, a transfer critics have referred to as a coup d’état. His vp, Boluarte, was shortly sworn in to switch him.
Nevertheless, Castillo loved sturdy backing in rural and Indigenous areas, and lots of of his supporters took to the streets to precise outrage at his December ouster.
Greater than 60 individuals have died within the demonstrations within the months since, with tons of extra injured as authorities forces clashed with protesters.
A particular rapporteur with the United Nations mentioned the violence disproportionately affected Indigenous communities. And the human rights group Amnesty Worldwide discovered proof of “racial and socio-economic bias” within the authorities’s use of deadly power.
Tamayo himself participated within the protests, lots of which referred to as for a brand new structure and early elections to switch Boluarte and the opposition-led Congress.
He additionally tackled the violence in a music video earlier this yr, depicting police beating protesters and chasing a girl who escapes by means of an Andean forest.
Boluarte has come below fireplace for her authorities’s response to the demonstrations, however she has refused to step down. And regardless of preliminary assist for shifting elections ahead, she has since backed away from that proposal, saying the difficulty was “closed”.
“The president has made guarantees that she should hold,” Tamayo mentioned. “In any other case, it’s a betrayal.”

Alonso Gurmendi, a Peruvian lecturer in worldwide relations at King’s Faculty London, believes artists like Tamayo are opening new areas for political discourse, amplifying the decision for change.
“Individuals are realising that it received’t be sufficient to simply go to the streets and protest,” he mentioned. “Lenin is channelling that together with his music. He’s galvanising social change and a grassroots motion by means of songs and artwork.”
Tamayo likewise acknowledges the facility of recent boards — notably social media platforms like TikTok — to generate change.
“Social networks can democratise,” he mentioned. “It’s a liberty. It’s a trigger for hope.”
However change takes time, as Tamayo himself admits. “This isn’t solely a optimistic message,” he mentioned of his music. “It’s a battle.”