Lisbon (AFP)

Wearing a long black wig, fishnet stockings and matching miniskirt, "Lila Fadista" brandishes a fan at the height of his beard, singing the pain and revolt of a gay community that has not been seen in the world of fado, the traditional song of Portugal.

At his side, on the stage, curled up on his electric guitar, his sidekick has his face concealed under a broad-brimmed felt hat that only lets him see his leopard pants and stiletto heels: this is the group "Fado Bicha ", which can be translated from Portuguese by" Fado Queer "or" Fado Folle ".

The duo revisits the heritage of this kind of melancholy music to tell the love of a fisherman with a fishmonger, the desperation of a homosexual dancer locked up in a psychiatric hospital or the pride of a transsexual woman who has become a figurehead of activists for the rights of LGBTI people (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex).

Still unknown by the general public, singer Tiago Lila of his real name and guitarist Joao Caçador have however given since 2017 some 150 concerts across Portugal, but also in Spain, France or Belgium. They often enliven the evenings of a Lisbon hotel aimed at a clientele of gay tourists who discover in silence these languid melodies.

"It's very moving, the artists have to get involved like that, it's great what they do for our community," says Guillaume Bellon, a 31-year-old French tourist living in this neighborhood hotel. trendy Lisbon.

- Diverted songs -

"When I sing fado, I feel a very feminine energy (...) I quickly realized that there was no place for me in the middle of traditional fado," says the 34-year-old singer, who abandoned the fado school he attended to create his travesti alter ego.

"This is the solution that I found to live my dream without having to give up a whole part of my identity," says this psychologist training.

Lila does not hesitate to appropriate the most famous titles and rewrite the lyrics of songs immortalized by the great diva of fado Amalia Rodrigues, disappeared just 20 years ago but still regularly on the radio.

The use of the electric guitar is also "a form of subversion," says Joao Caçador, 30-year-old instrumentalist who has studied jazz and continues to play in traditional fado houses. Usually, the fado song is accompanied by a classical guitar and a Portuguese guitar, of more rounded form and which counts twelve strings.

In fact, recall the two artists who grew up in the suburbs of the Portuguese capital, this musical genre was also born on the margins of society, in the popular neighborhoods of the city at the end of the eighteenth century to end up a cultural heritage Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2011.

- The shadow of the dictatorship -

Maria Severa, a singer who lived in the mid-nineteenth century, "is considered the first legend of fado or it was a Gypsy and a sex worker," notes Lila with a mischievous smile.

"For me, + Fado Bicha + is a fado much more true than the classic fados because it is a fado vagabond, a fado of the street, a fado of the forgotten", stresses the producer Luis Clara Gomes during a meeting of recording of the duo's first album.

In front of a project like this, "there are the traditional fado who shout disrespect," recognizes Carlos Sanches Ruivo, owner of the hotel where the duo regularly performs and president of the Chamber of Commerce and Tourism LGBTI from Portugal.

"But we want to get out of this status quo that remains linked to a dark period in our history," added the 51-year-old Franco-Portuguese in reference to the dictatorship of Antonio Salazar whose cultural policy was based on "three F" : Fado, Football and Fatima, Catholic sanctuary in the center of the country.

Even today, he says, if the law has evolved and allows, for example, same-sex marriage, society remains conservative and few are those who display their homosexuality.

"I do not make a distinction if it's gay culture or not, he sings with his soul, with his guts," says Ana Pereira during a concert of "Fado Bicha" in the program of a festival of music and emerging art, organized in an old abandoned restaurant at the gates of the city.

© 2019 AFP