Courage

A fortnight ago I visited one of my favourite places in Funchal: the Fado house ‘Sabor a Fado´. I am always impressed and mostly also quite moved by the music, and I am always over-the-moon happy that I manage to understand most of the lyrics. Which, at least for me, are an indispensable element of the Portuguese Fado songs. Though there are many cheerful Portuguese songs – and they do sing these at Sabor a Fado – the word Fado means fate and the music is often laden with a warm kind of sadness and nostalgia, for which only the Portuguese have an adequate word: Saudade.

One of my favourites is a fado called ‘Meu Amor Marinheiro’(my sailor love), where the left-behind woman cries out after her lover at sea. When owner and first fadista Alexandra Sousa sings this fado, you can sense that she knows about loss in her life, and the lyrics gain a depth that a much younger girl might not manage.

Usually, by non-Portuguese, Fado is thought to be sung by women. But there are many male fadistas, and the male voice lends a completely different quality to most fados. Less drama, but often with a subdued and subtle emotion. For some time now, much to my husband's and my own delight, Sabor a Fado also has a male fadista. His name is Nelson Lume and you can look him up on Facebook. His must be in his early forties, is unapologetically gay and a bit of a ‘bad boy’. That is why I should not have been surprised. But there he was, standing straight up, waiting for the intro to give him his cue, and I? A sat there open-mouthed as I recognised the music and I knew what was coming. Meu Amor Marinheiro. Written as a woman's song, he did not change a syllable and made us believe every word. A man crying out after his man at sea. Wow! What a courage! I know I wrote a story called ‘Fuck All’, but writing something from the safety of your kitchen table is one thing, actually standing up to a bunch of strangers and tell the story, that is ‘Fuck All’ sublimated. And shamelessly sensitive.

I had stored this evening's event into the back of my mind. And it stayed there until yesterday. Surfing the net, a YouTube thumbnail caught my eye. It said ‘Mon Légionnaire’ (Edith Piaf) by Lillian. Many will think Lillian is a girl's name, but it isn't. And the thumbnail featured a young boy. Curious, I clicked the link. It turned out to be a recent episode of The Voice of France. Featuring Lillian singing ‘Mon Légionnaire’. Made famous by Edith Piaf, who sung about her Légionnaire back in 1937 (referring to a soldier of the legendary French Foreign Legion) who loved her for one night and then left into the sunny morning, only to be found dead in the desert.

And here is this angelic and innocent looking boy, only 18 years old, owning the song. The ‘Voice’ coaches were gob-smacked. And I clicked 'replay´. And again.

 

The boy did not just sing the song, he lived it. He put paid to any frown upon one-night stands, hang on, to gay one-night stands, an the way he briefly closed his eyes when he told us ‘he was so beautiful and he smelled so good of warm sand’ told me this was genuine. You could see the boy needed a second to come back into himself after the last notes died. 

 

A bitter-sweet story.  And here is an 18 year old boy, 87 years later, and turns it into a thing of incredible beauty.  

When I was 18, and when I was forty, I could not have gathered enough courage to do a thing like this. And even today, society is not really ready for such candour, and I wonder if it ever will be. But I thank the powers that be that the world has produced a Nelson and a Lillian, and that I live to see the day. 

 Nederlandse versie hier.

links: 

• lyrics and YouTube for 'Meu Amor Marinheiro´
• original and full lyrics of Edith Piaf´s 'Mon Légionnaire and Youtube
• link to Lillian performing for 'The Voice of France' 

 note: 

Probably for the sake of the 'Voice' show, the lyrics of 'Mon Légionnaire' have been considerably shortened. I would love to  hear, but above all see, Lillian doing the full song. I am sure it will be a sight to behold!