Yes Laughter Belongs In Music....The Sound of Elis Regina

How the irrepressibly joyful Brazilian singer connected. And connects still....

“Does humor belong in music?”

This wasn’t exactly a new question when Frank Zappa asked it in 1986, via the title of a live album with one of his sharpest bands.

Well does it? Open question anymore. Zappa wasn’t simply being rhetorical; cue up the version of “Baby Take Your Teeth Out” and then answer. Or maybe “Let’s Move To Cleveland.” These are wry, arch, nuanced  expressions in the tradition of Mark Twain; encountering them today puts one in touch with a moment when metaphor was common, when meta thinking was welcome.

Did humor belong in culture generally when Zappa was on the road back then? It was a serious period in pop music. Big money was on the line: This was the era when Michael Jackson, Madonna and others pushed pop to gargantuan heights, in part by selling an idealized notion of what a star could/should be. The airbrushing era.

Look around at the artists who are running things right now. Everyone is so professional. So Taylor Swift. Auto-Tuned vocally and Auto-Tuned emotionally. Aspiring to a kind of all-knowing and invincible aura. They’re carefully formed media creations mostly following the ‘80s marketing toolkit. This year’s models arrive outfitted with the look and the social media presence and the moves necessary for a social media first impression. Where’s that Like button?

Our current megastars won’t make a joke unless it’s a snide one, a put down. And they don’t dare leave a giggle on anything destined for public consumption – it’s off-message. A distraction. More human than the surroundings will allow.

So.....Does laughter belong in music?

Elis Regina, the legendary Brazilian singer who died in 198x, thought so. Her recordings from the ‘60s and ‘70s weave elements of samba, bossa nova and the rock-era Musica Popular Brazil into music bursting with life, its ecstasies and assorted inevitable messes.

Though spontaneity ruled her work, Regina was one of the most precise vocalists of the 20th century. She had impeccable pitch and great control of wide intervals, and uncannily accurate timing. She was unafraid to take impulsive, extra-large flying leaps when shaping a lyric. Like Frank Sinatra or Sarah Vaughan, she had control over implication to an uncanny degree – infusing verses with unexpected meaning just by humming, or dropping a perfectly placed offhand sigh. Or laughing.

Regina was sometimes called “the Little Pepper” because of her fiery temperament; she had a reputation for being “difficult,” and famously struggled with various addictions throughout her career.

Yet whatever troubles she experienced, she clearly had great fun making music. Anywhere and everywhere. She could be in a pressurized studio setting with A-list musicians, crafting a track like “Aquarela do Brazil” that would become a hit, and her vocal, the one she deemed a keeper, contains several moments where she’s chuckling audibly on the refrains.

There are countless examples: On Regina’s live version of the Baden Powell classic “Tristeza,” she sounds almost out of control, and so does the band. As the samba unfolds, she laughs in a way that conveys a kind of resignation – it’s like she’s on a runaway train and is resigned to taking that ride, because what else can she do? “Vou Deitar E Rolar,” which opens her wonderful 1970 Em Pleno Varao, catches her in a rolling, cascading belly-laugh through the syllables of the chorus. She’s trying to deliver it straight, but just can't; the struggle is contagious.

Hearing these unscripted outbursts in our joy-challenged moment, I found myself wondering – what was going on in the room? Were there antics? Or was the trigger internal? Was she reacting to a memory?

The sharing of laughter is a kind of social currency. It involves trusting one’s surroundings and present company. It requires little  bravery in real life, and a considerable bravery when on a stage, or creating in a studio for posterity.

This didn’t seem to phase Elis Regina. She was endlessly curious, a natural improviser; she rarely planned her moves, least of all ones involving laughter, in advance. Her responses were genuine outgrowths of the moment. And because she operated on such an instinctual level, her work had great immediacy – she transcended all the usual pretense surrounding the act of performance. Sure she had immense talent, and she knew how to effectively use it to serve the songs. But she also dared to bring key aspects of humanity into the work. It wasn’t just the sound of her voice. It was those little things, those casual laughs and heavy sighs, that made everything she did extraordinarily magnetic.

Coming Friday: The sound of genius laughing, an Elis Regina playlist.