Leci Brandão da Silva is a Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian singer and composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 of Brazilian Popular Music (Música Popular Brasileira or MPB). She is the daughter of Pérola Negra, one of the artists who pioneered in making the Brazilian pagode

Pagode

Pagode is a Brazilian style of music which originated in Salvador, Bahia , and quickly went down to Rio de Janeiro region, as a subgenre of Samba. Pagode originally meant a celebration with lots of food, music, dance and party...

 music popular throughout the land. Her performance of "Quero Sim" won the National Meeting of Samba Composers in 1973.

One of Leci Brandão's latest performances was in 2005 with Raça Brasileira: 20 Anos (DVD: 'Raca Brasileira', rated NR, one hour/2005) with many other Brazilian samba

Samba

Samba is a Brazilian dance and musical genre originating in Bahia and with its roots in Brazil and Africa via the West African slave trade and African religious traditions. It is recognized around the world as a symbol of Brazil and the Brazilian Carnival...

 greats (i.e. Beth Carvalho

Beth Carvalho

Elizabeth Santos Leal de Carvalho is a Brazilian samba singer, guitarist, cavaquinist and composer.-Biography:...

, Arlindo Cruz

Arlindo Cruz

Arlindo Cruz is a Brazilian musician, composer and singer, working in the genre of samba and pagode...

, Almir Guineto

Almir Guineto

Almir Guineto is a Brazilian sambista, singer/songwriter and instrumentalist, working in the genres of samba and pagode.-Biography:...

, etc.).

As an African-Brazilian

Afro-Brazilian

In Brazil, the term "preto" is one of the five categories used by the Brazilian Census, along with "branco" , "pardo" , "amarelo" and "indígena"...

, a woman

Woman

A woman , pl: women is a female human. The term woman is usually reserved for an adult, with the term girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent...

,and an artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

, Leci Brandão has long taken opportunities to declare herself against racism

Racism

Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

 and all other forms of discrimination

Discrimination

Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...

. She has lent her name, voice and cache by performing in LGBT

LGBT

LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...

 events against homophobia

Homophobia

Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...

.