Elza Soares (1930 – 2022) is portrayed in an illustration on the cover of the book by journalist Lígia Moreli Reproduction / Cover of the book 'Elza Soares – Insurrection in the throat' ? BOOK REVIEW Title: Elza Soares – Insurrection in the throat Author: Lígia Morelli Rating: ? ? ? ? “Singing is political! You can't sing without the marks or scars that say about a body, that act on it. Each one sings what they can carry: erased memories, vague memories, marks that are so profound that they personify themselves” ? The thought reproduced above is a fragment of the text written by singer and music researcher Fabiana Cozza, “A Voz-Puíta na carne negra de Elza Soares”, to introduce the book “Elza Soares – Insurreição na throat”, written by journalist Lígia Moreli and published via Edições Sesc. Cozza's preface is so thick that, more than presenting the book, it enhances and complements the author's thesis. In the book, the voice and body of Elza da Conceição Soares (June 23 or July 22, 1930 – January 20, 2022) are dissected as political instruments in the fight against racism and violence against women, among other identity issues associated with the Rio singer, especially since 2015, the year in which Elza released an album, “A Mulher do Fim do Mundo”, which placed her back at the top of Brazilian music. with impactful sounding songs and lyrics. The narrative excerpt from the book “Elza Soares – Insurreição na throat” is interesting precisely because it shows the rupture that this 2015 anthology album established in the singer's discography, remodeling and consecrating Elza's image with clearer political contours. That was when the artist – until then almost always perceived by the media as the stereotypical wild mulatta from the sambalanços of the 1960s – reemerged as the proud woman of the end of the world, reborn from the ashes of a music market already in a galloping mutation for the digital era. It is a fact that this transcendental woman – coming from Planeta Fome as the then freshman Elza performed in 1953 on Ary Barroso's program (1903 – 1964) – has always existed and had already appeared explicitly on albums such as “Somos Todos Equal” (1985) and above all “From the Coccix to the Neck” (2002), an album often cited throughout the book for having outlined the revolution that would only take effect 13 years later with the 2015 album produced by Guilherme Kastrup under the artistic direction of Celso Sim and Romulo Fróes. But it is also a fact that Elza Soares only managed to fully take control of her own narrative from this 2015 album, which appeared in an era in which all artists had a voice through social media, without depending on the media to be able to express themselves to the world and without depending on a record company to make and release an album in that world. It is in this once again golden moment that Lígia Morelli captures and analyzes Elza Soares' voice, emphasizing both the politicized perspective of the repertoire of the album “A Mulher do Fim do Mundo” and the speech made by the singer on the Rock in Rio stage at the premiere of the show “Planeta Fome”, based on the homonymous 2019 album and presented by Elza at the festival on September 29 of that year 2019 with several guests. Over the course of three chapters (“Elza in the light of the 21st century”, “Voices and extremities of the end of the world” and “Poetics of insurrection in the throat”) and a conclusion (“A voice that still moves history”, about the echoes of bossa negra and the artist's speech in voices like that of singer Luedji Luna), the author shows how Elza Soares raised her voice to say what was silent, raising high flags such as that of black feminism. Even though the focus is on the singer's luminous representation from 2015 onwards, the book's narrative also reverberates several moments in Elza Soares' trajectory in which the singer subverted expectations and went through the cracks of closed doors to survive, singing to avoid going crazy (as highlighted in the title of the biography written by journalist José Louzeiro and published in 1997) and always being reborn like a phoenix until definitively transcending when leaving the scene in January 2022 to remain in history as an example of resilience in a world that has always tried to stifle the speeches and political singing of black voices. Cover of the book 'Elza Soares – Insurrection in the throat', by Lígia Moreli Divulgação / Edições Sesc