Alceu Valença

Alceu Valença (Brazilian Portuguese: [awˈsew vaˈlẽsɐ]; born July 1, 1946) is a Brazilian singer, musician, and songwriter.

Alceu Valenca was born in the countryside of Pernambuco, Northeast Brazil. He is considered the most successful artist in achieving an aesthetic balance between traditional northeastern Brazilian music and a broad range of electronic sounds and effects from pop music. In most of his songs, one can find traces of maracatu, coco and "repentes de viola" (improvising fast-paced Brazilian folk music). Valença could utilize the electric guitar, the electric bass, and lately even a synthesizer was added to his broad scope of musical instruments.

Because of that, Valença was able to recreate Northeastern traditional music, like baião, coco, toada, maracatu, frevo, caboclinhos, embolada and repentes: all sung with a sometimes rock sometimes alternative sounding music background. His music and his themes are intangible, universal and unlimited. However, his aesthetic basis is genuinely Brazilian Northeastern music.

Biography

Alceu Valença was born in São Bento do Una in Northeast Brazil. When he was young, he used to listen to songs by Dalva de Oliveira, Orlando Silva, Sílvio Caldas etc. When he was 5 years old, he participated in a music contest, singing a song by Capiba. Some years later, his mother got sick and his family moved to Recife to live in his aunt's house. In this period, Valença got interested in some musical instruments, such as acoustic guitar and viola. However, he only won his own guitar when he was 15.

In 1970, Valença earned a law degree at the Recife Law School. However, he only followed the career for a few months. In fact, in the early 1970s, the reason he had no time for a law career was that he had already launched into a musical direction.