VICTOR KINJO

Victor Kinjo is a Japanese Brazilian singer, composer and researcher, nominated for Best Singer (regional music) at the 2018 Brazilian Music Awards. Born in São Paulo as a grandson of Okinawan Diasporta to South America, he started to sing in childhood: Japanese music. He was, then, influenced by the Brazilian, North-American and European music of his father’s record player and the 90’s pop songs. In youth, he studied acoustic guitar, piano and singing, composed his first songs and performed in Festivals and Cultural Meetings. PhD in Social Science at the University of Campinas, his dissertation “Songs of Diasporic Memory: representation, (dis)identification and performance from Mishima to Okinawa” presents an innovative dialogue between social sciences, arts and cultural studies. Kinjo is also a master in environmental sociology at the University of Campinas, bachelor in Economics at the University of São Paulo and Social Science at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo. In 2015, he founded the SAMAUMA Rural Arts Residency, a space for research and creation in the middle of the Atlantic forest, at the border of the metropolitan region of São Paulo. He has performed in several cultural centers and universities of Brazil, Netherlands, Spain, USA and Japan, including Harvard University, NYU and the UN. Currently, he is working in his second album Terraqueous and developing a postdoc research at the  the Institute for Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo with a project on culture and river revival.