Singing in Brazil

Before I moved to Brazil 20 years ago and polished my skills as a writer, I claimed a second talent - singing. Not only did I take delight in the sound of my voice, but so did many of my fellow Americans. But when I tried my vocal gift out on Brazilians they seemed almost indifferent to it. And this sudden loss of recognition made my wonder - is my talent waning or had my audience simply changed?

True, it was never a very original voice because I, like many others, merely imitated the romantic crooning of Frank Sinatra. This is not to say that I sang like Sinatra. No one can do that. I was just a strong-voiced baritone who tried to copy his phrasing and put emotion into my sound, the way he did.

When I began dating in the late1960s, I’d take young women to some secluded spot and sing them a Sinatra song as a prelude to a kiss. This seduction technique worked, I believed, not because these women wanted to be seduced, but because my voice had stripped them of their resistance to the idea. Thus began my singing self-confidence.

My bursting into song at the right romantic moment - a seduction technique I successfully used through the 1970s - was something I learned from another American tradition, the Broadway musical. And my getting the lead role in a high school musical further boosted my belief in my vocal skills. That self-confidence turned into sheer cockiness during my first three years in Rio de Janeiro, where I landed lead roles in three musicals put on by American and British musical groups for the city’s English-speaking community.

But a lack of financing forced those groups to disband after my last leading role, as gambler Nathan Detroit in “Guys and Dolls” (a role Sinatra played in the movie version of the musical). And suddenly my singing talent faced an entirely new audience, made up only of Brazilians.

This was a people who thought the Broadway tradition of suddenly bursting into song during an on-stage conversation was more than a little bit strange. And while balladeers like Sinatra and Tony Bennett continued to seduce Americans through the 1990s, Brazilians had, by the 1970s, lost their passion for local crooners of the 1950s and 1960s, like Dick Farney, Orlando Silva and Silvio Caldas.

Perhaps this country’s different musical traditions and changing musical tastes explain why Brazilians didn’t fall for my voice. When, in 1983, I took my first Brazilian girlfriend to a Teresópolis mountaintop and burst into a Sinatra love song, she gave me a strange “what’s going on” look. And her polite applause at the song’s finale wasn’t exactly the cue I was waiting for to take her in my arms.

It took me some time to realize that this seduction technique might have worked, but only on her grandmother. But it was only when another Brazilian girlfriend told me she preferred my funny stories to my sappy love songs that I began to realize that my voice was no longer an aphrodisiac.

My Brazilian wife doesn’t mind my singing when we’re driving long distances, especially if she can’t pick up anything on the radio. But my voice simply doesn’t move her. And while my stepson, who plays piano, lets me sing to his jazz renditions of Richard Rodgers and Cole Porter songs, what impresses him isn’t my voice but that I know the lyrics to all the tunes.

Still, our “duets” have, in the last few years, oiled my rusty vocal chords. And his jazz phrasings have pushed me to sing those songs, not like Sinatra, but with a freer, more improvisational style.

My new voice had its debut when my stepdaughter asked the two of us to perform at her 23rd birthday at a Rio piano bar. Though I hadn’t sung in public since “Guys and Dolls,” 15 years earlier, what really made me nervous was idea of exposing myself to a group of Brazilian post-adolescents.

So I downed a few whiskeys. Then I told my stepson to play “My Funny Valentine” and to follow my jazz interpretation, one that milked the longer notes for their emotion, ala Sinatra, and improvised between them to give the melancholy ballad a touch of swing.

Maybe that’s why my performance got lots of applause. But I wondered how many were clapping because they knew me, because they admired my courage, or because they were amazed that I had another dimension. As my sister-in-law put it, “I didn’t know you sing.” The crucial verdict came only when the bartender, forced by his job to hear many amateur singers, said “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

Since that night I’ve been singing more, not only in the shower, but even at my last few birthday parties when my stepson and I do a few Sinatra songs, though now I sing them “My Way,” as Frank might say. My voice has changed over time, maybe because changing continents has changed my audience or maybe because, otherwise, it would have begun to bore me.

Michael Kepp, a U.S. journalist living in Brazil for 24 years, is the author of a book of essays "Sohando com Sotaque: Confissões e Desabafos de um Gringo Brasileiro," (Dreaming in an Accent: The Confessions and Critiques of a Brazilian Gringo), published by Editora Record. Order Sonhando com Sotaque from Livraria Cultura (in Portuguese). Learn more about Mike Kepp and his work on his official website.