Oh, for the Sweet Music of Belly Laughs.

COMEDIANS have long worked song-and-dance gags into their acts. Certainly ''Saturday Night Live'' has produced its share, whether a spaghetti-limbed Steve Martin performing ''King Tut'' in pharaoh garb or Adam Sandler mewling ''The Hanukkah Song.'' But strapping on a guitar or plugging in a vintage synthesizer is now becoming standard practice. Contemporary jokesters like Zach Galifianakis, Reggie Watts and Demetri Martin have made musical instruments essential comedic accouterments, as common as ill-fitting trousers and a brick wall. Now comes the New York Funny Songs Fest, a four-day event that bills itself as the city's first comedy music festival. Jessica Delfino, a New York comedian who routinely totes her flying-V ukulele, guitar and ''rape whistle'' onstage, organized the event, inviting an assortment of New York performers, including Rob Paravonian, Jen Kwok, Ben Lerman, Soce the Elemental Wizard, Mindy Raf, Carolyn Castiglia, and Myq Kaplan and Micah Sherman to perform their wittiest verses next week at a handful of locations on the Lower East Side. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]