” My first viral hit got caught by accident and that was the start of my whole journey on social media. This exhilarating event evoked by Sami Landri took place in the early morning in Edmundston in front of the hotel where the Acadian was staying with her colleagues Chiquita Mére, Rose Beef and Parisienne as part of an unprecedented rural and Francophone drag tour. in New Brunswick. “I’m going to tell your mother that you smoke jar ! Stop your nonsense there, your attitude you can tighten it! sums up in a delicious chiac the drag queen grimaced into an alter ego trashy straight out of the 2000s — low rise jeans, cropped top, strong breasts and pink mouth outlined in black pencil — and far from the standards dictated by RuPaul’s Drag Race. Nearly two years later, the video peaks at 1.2 million views on TikTok and those with seven-figure views are legion. From now on, some 400,000 people follow his good fortune on the platforms daily.
“It was a huge surprise. We thought we were rockstars and we feltit like the most badass persons in the whole world because we were paid well to perform in the villages of the Maritimes,” recalls Sami Landri, thrilled to be able to share his Acadianness and his identity. queer with others for two years. And Xavier Gould, alias Chiquita Mére, his long-term partner in life and on stage, who each time captures this exuberant energy in image, to add: “we knew that what we were doing was really unique and special”. Where there had never been shows of drag queens and francophone queer artists, the pair, based in Montreal and originally from the greater Moncton area, have indeed been able to bring their grain of madness to significantly permeate the landscape. local culture. Xavier Gould believes that today, the portrait of New Brunswick, the only officially bilingual province, is more accurate. ” We were doing whatever the fuck which we liked and, as we were the first, we did not have this pressurethere to do in a well-defined way in order to be able to do book. Now there’s plenty of news performer Acadians who stand out and who continue to make shows rural in French”, underlines the drag queen.
The assumed beauty of chiac
If many think that the duo speaks in Franglais, Xavier Gould wants to clarify the situation. “We speak Chiac, an Acadian dialect from southeastern New Brunswick with a francophone structure that has its roots in Old French, English and current French. But not just any chiac. “After my studies at Mount Allison, the English-speaking university of Sackville, I started a blog of poems, critical texts and stupid capsules of characters who spoke a feminine chiac, like Jass-Sainte”, explains the multidisciplinary artist who also evolves in literature, theater, humor and cinema. According to Xavier Gould, the musicality of the chiac spoken by women is different from that of men, who also say different things.
As soon as I open my mouth in the Francophonie, the first thing people say to me is “ah your accent this, your accent that”. People don’t understand.
“This feminine chiac allowed me to come to terms with my queer identity. Thanks to ambiguity — woman? male ? non-binary person? — I made fun of our culture and immersed myself in stereotypes… a bit like a linguistic drag. It’s very chic in spirit! This “language of humor and love” reflects, still according to Xavier Gould, this texture of Acadianness typical of the southeast, full of mockery and self-mockery. “That’s exactly what we do with our drag. It’s not that we don’t take it seriously, it’s that we don’t take ourselves seriously”, specifies the artist.
“As soon as I open my mouth in the Francophonie, the first thing people say to me is ‘ah your accent this, your accent that’. People don’t understand,” remarks Sami Landri, who wants more than anything to use chiac to its full potential and make it shine. “With Xavier, we assume the responsibility of speaking it and giving our point of view on our Acadie and our language. For his part, Xavier Gould points out that the two never had to compromise their way of speaking to win a contract in Montreal, while the debates on the French language resumed with renewed vigor. “The promotion of the “good” French language can still exist, but there is no need to have a deletion of dialects. At the end of the day, there are communities that speak the way that we talk about and who are still there. »
Since their success flourishes exclusively independently (collaborations with Lisa LeBlanc, participation in Pride Montreal), Xavier Gould and Sami Landri, therefore, do not feel the need to please the general public by adopting a smooth and sanitized tone. “I don’t hide my chiac just because Quebeckers or the French don’t understand everything I say,” boasts Sami Landri before lamenting that Acadian characters on television “often have a totally fake very French chiac with English words in it”. ” I feel even more the responsibility to speak a chiac which is true, because it is not everyone who will defend it, ”adds the drag queen.
A year and a half after moving to Montreal to pursue their respective careers, Sami Landri wishes to take the experience of drag queen chiac further. “There is clearly something for me here. and i’m gonna chase it. I am aware that my success is linked to the fact that I speak as I speak. It may seem a bit weird, but the chiac gave me a lot, ”enthuses the rising star of social networks. Coincidence or not, his online popularity exploded when he arrived in the metropolis, to the point of questioning many things. “It’s the biggest gift I have ever had the universe: not only did my videos go viral, but all of a sudden, I had fans! It has changed everything »concludes Sami Landri who promises to support the chiac in music, very soon.