Marcel Vallès spent three years in South America from 2012, living and playing in Chile, Argentina and Brazil before returning to his home town of Els Guiamets in Tarragona. Boas Lembranças, which translates from Portuguese as “good memories”, is what he brought back: eight guitar compositions recorded as a duo with percussionist Steve Shehan, the French-American musician of Cherokee descent who has drummed for Paul Simon, Bob Dylan and Peter Gabriel over a career spanning five decades.

The two met at a festival in Morocco and the album took shape from there. Vallès recorded his parts at Estudio Guará in Spain, Shehan at Studio des Dahlias in France. Ricardo Camera handled mixing and mastering. The cover artwork is by Shehan.

“Babaião” is one of those eight compositions, played live as a trio with Samuel Passos, the Brazilian bassist and composer who has spent the better part of a decade in Barcelona working the city’s Brazilian instrumental music scene, and Pedrinho Augusto, a Brasília-born drummer now also based in Barcelona who trained at Berklee and has played with Gilberto Gil and Victor Wooten among others.

Stream and listen to “Babaião” HERE and get your copy of Boas Lembranças HERE