Noise! Let Fado Bicha sing. Citizenship, Resistance and Politics in Contemporary Popular Music

Abstract

Noting the inadequacy of the understanding of music as a mere superficial phenomenon of a sociopolitical expression, the article presents how Fado Bicha emphasizes the importance of performativity in an improbable resistance founded in fado. It seeks to demonstrate how the performances and songs of Fado Bicha assume themselves as producers of denunciation and protest and, above all, as (re)creators of gender themes/problems. Their manifest insurgence in the Portuguese reality is based in provoking agitation and change through their reading of it, as it constitutes an integral element of a collective identity reconfigured by artivism. Thus, we sought to break with the fact that music, as a medium that reaches a large number of people on a trans-global scale, has still been little studied in its political impact, that is, as an instrument of refutation of hegemonies, of resistance and of articulation of new alternatives-and, precisely, where it was least expected-in fado.