Unbearable Fadistas: António Variações and Fado as Queer Praxis

Abstract

Antonio Variacoes’s first single, Povo que lavas no rio/Estou alem  (1982), offers a radical version of Amalia Rodrigues’s fado “Povo que lavas no rio” (1962). This article considers Variacoes as fadista in order to think fado as queer praxis. Though Variacoes's debut release was a commercial success, his turn as fadista provoked critical derision for what, I argue, is a trans formation of the genre’s gendered codes and practices. Variacoes's queer masculinity gives body and voice to the transgressive sexuality enmeshed within gendered and fetishized repertoires of fado that are most recognizable in the myths and voices of the genre's divas. This article locates Variacoes within a fado genealogy, from Maria Severa to Amalia Rodrigues, of performers who have similarly been unbearable in body and voice. The purpose of this is to draw attention to fado's affective dispersions of sex and reveal how the genre has coalesced in relation to queer tactics and people throughout its history.