The sudden and intense success of pop singer António Variações between 1982 and 1984 raises a series of questions about social and cultural transformation in post-revolutionary Portugal. Most immediately, his provocative image, made of bizarre outfits and sensual gestures, quickly became an opportunity for the affirmation of a new field of urban culture. The 1980s as epitomized by Variações, in this sense, would witness the emergence of a new portfolio of social performance through night-life, fashion and pop music. Moreover, his death of AIDS – the first case of a Portuguese public figure – would give his short career the status of a symbol. And yet, as the persistence of his songs in public memory suggests, Variações’s impact must also be looked for in the unique position the singer occupied in Portuguese modern music. A hybrid of traditional forms, including fado and northern folklore, and pop, his music challenged all familiar labels in the music industry of the early 1980s. The immediate public response to his songs, however, suggests that Variações performed a very successful fusion of all most recognizable traditions in Portuguese popular music.

In this presentation, Dr Frederico Bonaddio will try to discuss the relation between this rather unexpected event and the historical context of the early 1980s, a period marked by a particularly dramatic negotiation between Europeanization and the memory of authoritarianism in Portuguese society.

This seminar is part of the Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American Studies research seminar series 2017/18.