Marcos Valle is a legend that, like many of the other great songwriters who were imbibing the creative waters of Brazil in the 60s and 70s, never really got his dues. Along with Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento, Caetano Veloso and others, Valle wrote some of the most enduring music of the 60s. He helped define the Musica Popular Brazileira sound in which bossa encountered American rock and west coast psychedelia to startlingly original effect and which remains close to the hearts of some of contemporary music's most exciting acts - Beck and the Super Furries both spring to mind.
Having seen his music embraced by the more daring elements within UK club culture it's in this context that he reappears on the London stage after recording a second album for London-based Brazilian aficionados, Far Out Recordings. Kept relevant by the unobtrusive but distinctly London-circa-2000 production of Roc Hunter, Valle seems to have lost little of his knack for writing charming Brazilian pop songs.
In fact, on the evidence of this performance, he's enjoying this second lease of life and, after the slightly confused Latin house posture of 'Nova Bossa Nova', his second album for Far Out, 'Escape', sees him approaching the perfectly concise pop of his best known work. The album's title track in particular recalls the infectiously repetitious vocal rhythms of 'Crickets Sing For Anamaria' whilst, elsewhere, Valle's new material does more than hint at the wonders of his 1967 album, 'Braziliance'.
Now, very much in his late fifties, Valle would have been forgiven for assuming that he'd never appear in front of a London audience again, especially not one so young. Perhaps that's why he appears so startled for the first half of this Jazz Cafe set, introducing new and old tracks in just-distinguishable English and only really beginning to enjoy himself as the encore beckons.
Like all aging greats, he reserves the right to concentrate on his new material, even to the extent of playing 'Escape' twice - hey, the guy's nearly sixty, maybe he just forgot that he'd already played it. But, when he does offer us a glimpse of the classics, 'Batucada' and 'Crickets Sing For Anamaria', the uproarious reception is marred only by the feeling that something is missing - the string section. The strings were what really made these songs soar and gave them their enchanting fifties movie soundtrack romanticism. The Jazz Cafe, though, has to make do with a four-piece band and a drum machine adding in the extra percussion - a brief malfunction makes this painfully apparent at one point - but then again the Marcos Valle estate is hardly packing Sinatra statistics. These are, of necessity, budget classics.
Like the 4/4 beat that appears behind one of the evening's renditions, the drum machine is as welcome in the live performance of Valle's music as a virtuoso six minute guitar solo and, given that some of Brazil's most incredible percussive masterpieces sprang from trios like Bossa Tres, it begs the question of whether synthetic beats are strictly necessary.
But it's the contemporary musicians and DJs rediscovering this music that we have to thank for Marcos Valle turning up in London at all and we should be grateful. I'll see you down the front when he plays the Barbican with a full string section.
