I can rarely name my favorite moment in a song as clearly as in “Aguas de Março”: Minute two, second 54. The Brazilian singer Elis Regina sings the second syllable of the word “Ida”, ie the “-da”. There are already a few verses in this feather-light, sad song, and there is currently a kind of verbal exchange taking place between Elis Regina and her singing partner Tom Jobim, who also wrote the song, it is one of the most famous of the Bossa Nova genre (and maybe the most beautiful).
Now they take turns tossing each other a word, and even if it was already noticeable beforehand that you are dealing with two people who like each other and are in a good mood, a spark jumps here at the latest, jumps from the year 1974 straight to the heart, because she sends this “-da” out into the world with such a nice chuckle of joy. In the following bars you can hear that she is at least smiling, if not laughing, while singing, and it is impossible, really impossible, not to feel something like happiness yourself.
The air sizzles between the two
There is a video for this recording. The two of them stand to the left and right of a hanging microphone in a dark room and sing, nothing more happens. They look like two intellectuals from a Woody Allen movie, if you turn off the sound you might think they were just talking. He wears a mustard-colored V-neck sweater with a shirt with a large collar, she a coarse denim shirt. Her short haircut is half hidden by huge 1970s headphones. And the air sizzles between them. Not sexually charged, but with interest and warmth.
It’s really lovely how they are with each other. He grins at her, she laughs back, she whistles a verse seriously. Once he forgets to move his mouth to playback; after an almost imperceptible cut she suddenly has a burning cigarette between two fingers. After the last note he rolls his eyes in a playful way and kneels while she leans back and laughs. Happiness, they say, is fleeting. It was captured here once.
You can find more episodes of the “Nothing new” column here.