Os Fado Bicha - breaking the taboos of Portugal’s unique music tradition

First published by www.Latinolife.co.uk in July 2024: https://www.latinolife.co.uk/articles/fado-bicha-challenging-taboos-portugals-most-famous-music

Portuguese Fado music is one of the tourist attractions of Lisbon, to be enjoyed over dinner, or less formally in bars where various singers will perform a couple of songs each, always in Portuguese. Guidebooks tell about its history in the Mouraria, an area once known for bars frequented by pickpockets and prostitutes, and Severa the famous fadista of the area. Amalia Rodrigues is the best-known 20th Century singer, who became a national icon during and after the ditadura which only ended in the Carnation Revolution of 1974. She and others and their costumes feature in the Fado Museum.

But Fado was also one of the ‘Three Fs’, Fatima (the shrine), Football and Fado, which cemented the ideology of the Salazar dictatorship, and for this reason many people rejected it after 1974.

Some people view the music of the Fado Houses as merely something for tourists to consume, while the ‘real’ Fado has died or is in decay. Then there is the paradox that the ‘traditional’ Fado community is very conservative, especially about gender issues, despite the origins of the music being in the margins of society.

These and other questions are the focus of a new documentary film As Fado Bicha, by the French director Justine Lemahieu which was shown at the Indielisboa Film Festival recently. As Fado Bicha are João who is gay and Lila who is a trans-feminine person, and they play a variety of instruments not typical of conventional Fado. And like Mariza, who broadened her music beyond its conservative environment, gained a following outside Portugal.

The word ‘Bicha’ in Portuguese is still a derogatory term against gay people, like Queer was in English.

Justine made the film with the benefit of her anthropological studies, resisting the tendency to make easy judgements about contemporary Fado or its history which is steeped in mythology, and needs a critical appreciation of the kind that Roland Barthes advocated.

As Justine says: “Depending on places, social contexts and who is present, the gender rules are not necessarily so rigid. They vary and they are changing. I am sure that the work of Fado Bicha and other artists have an important role in these changes”.

I was able to discuss these issues in a fascinating conversation with João, Lila and Justine, before a show of the new play A Casa Portuguesa (The Portuguese House) which was playing at the Maria Matos theatre, in which the duo have leading roles.