Brazilian Singer Collection of Fan's Underwear Will Be Displayed in Touring Museum

10/02/2015 - 10h18

Years before the country's crop of "fruit-women" -dancers whose nicknames refer to fruits- Brazilian singer Wando already reaped g-string panties with the front in the shape of cashew, grape and strawberry.

Stored in a green plastic pot in apple shape, they are a drop in the ocean of 17 thousand pieces of underwear (men's included); one of them brings a message in marker pen: "Wando's gay friends".

They are gifts from fans collected by the singer who died of a stroke in 2012 at the age of 66. Part of his legacy will be shown across the country in a touring museum inside a bus.

The project is in the process of fundraising. Its creator, singer's daughter Gabrielle Burcci, 41, claims that the collection covers "quite a lot", just like granny's underpants.

Apart from being a singer, Wando was a street market vendor and a Samba player.

He also was a militant of the "Diretas Já" and after President Tancredo Neves died, in 1985, he wrote the song "Chora Coração" for Trancredo's widow Risoleta.

In the same decade he wrote songs with Chico Anysio ("Safada") and Pelé ("Palco do Amor", which lyrics say: "the beast in heat explodes in scream").

"At first my father was shaken as I was associated with bad taste. But then he said: 'If being kitsch is selling 10 million records, then let it go'."

Gabrielle believes the museum on wheels will well represent the singer who brought joy "to people in the countryside, his biggest audience".

"People go and Brazil doesn't remember them," says Wando's firstborn.

At the end of his life, Wando used a biblical proverb that says: "Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof".

Translated by JULIANA CALDERARI

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	Divulgação
	Wando died of a stroke in 2012 at the age of 66