Nicola Conte Presents Viagem 4

With his consistently excellent Viagem series, Italian jazz don Nicola Conte has compiled some of the richest, strangest and most compelling rare bossa nova albums of recent years. While there’s nothing to quite match the big-band voodoo of Eliana Pittman’s ‘Batucada Negro’ from the third volume, this fourth instalment is remarkable for nothing else if not highlighting the fact that Brazil’s compiled-to-death 1960s and 70s motherlode still hasn’t been exhausted. Take Quarteto 004 for instance. With one sole, fairly obscure late 60s album to their credit, they don’t figure in many official histories, but their even more obscure cover of Tom Jobim’s ‘O Morro Nao Tem Vez’ is just wonderful, all compressed falsetto harmonies piping with the pressure of a steam train at full tilt. Deft harmonies soar all over this album, chasing the flute of As Compositoras’ ‘Ponte de Vista’ and the wheedling jazz guitar of Quarteto de Saba’s ‘Pra Que Chorar’. The frenetic ‘Balumba’, by the late actress Anilza Leoni, roars out of the leftfield, swung into a frenzy by her gloriously insouciant Carmen Miranda-esque phrasing and juggernaut rhythm section. Beachfront navel-gazing this is not. According to the blurb, it’s an attempt to ‘take bossa back to the people’. Which inevitably means taking it to the dance floor. Repeated listening reveals nuanced depths that whet the appetite for volume five.