Bossa nova meets the Beatles

Djavan says, "The Beatles were the most meaningful influence for me as a young musician." (Handout Photo)

When the Beatles swept across the Atlantic in the mid-1960s, the band didn't just storm North America's shores. The psychedelic textures perfected on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" played a key role in igniting the musical manifestation of Brazil's Tropicalia movement, an influence that's unmistakable on the early albums of Os Mutantes, Caetano Veloso, and Tom Zé. A few years later, the imprint of Lennon and McCartney was just as strong on the brilliant group of musicians from Minas Gerais who congregated around Milton Nascimento.

The Fab Four even reached into Alagoas, the small northeastern state where a teenage Djavan Viana formed the Beatles cover band LSD (Luz, Som, Dimensão, which translates to Light, Sound, Dimension). A decade later, Djavan emerged as one of Brazil's most popular and admired singers and composers by melding the Beatles' songcraft with bossa nova melodies and West African rhythms.

"The Beatles were the most meaningful influence for me as a young musician," says Djavan, 59, who makes his first Boston appearance in seven years Sunday at the Orpheum Theatre. He performs with the octet featured on his recent album, "Matizes," including his sons, guitarist Max and drummer João Viana, and a three-piece horn section with trumpeter Walmir Gil, trombonist François Lima, and saxophonist Marcelo Martins.

"When the Beatles came onto the scene, I was listening to lots of bossa nova, French music, Argentinean music, African music, and jazz, and the Beatles transformed my musical perception," Djavan says in Portuguese by phone from Rio de Janeiro, speaking through an interpreter. "They showed the world how to use the perfect chord change creatively, in a sophisticated way. This influenced me in a definitive way."

The Beatles opened his ears, and he kept on soaking up the sounds of American R&B and jazz. "During my formative years I listened to Dinah Washington and a lot, a lot, a lot of Chet Baker," Djavan says. By the time he moved from Alagoas's capital, Maceió, to Rio in 1973, he was a fully formed composer with a folder full of more than 60 songs.

As the last major Brazilian pop star to attain fame through the hugely popular network television-produced song festivals, Djavan first gained notice in 1975. The era of protest songs had largely passed, and his elliptical, poetic lyrics set to lush, soaring melodies matched the mood of the times.

With his bright, expressive tenor, he had already recorded his first standard, "Flor de Lis," when Maria Bethânia selected his tune "Álibi" as the title track for the epochal 1978 album often described as her "Sgt. Pepper's." Always a keen talent scout, Bethânia was the first artist to record one of Djavan's tunes, and "Álibi" became the first album by a female artist to sell more than a million copies in Brazil.

An international pop force in the 1980s, Djavan collaborated with artists such as Stevie Wonder, Paco de Lucia, and Toots Thielemans. At home Bethânia's monster hit opened the door to a flood of interpreters, as more than a dozen Djavan tunes entered the Brazilian standard repertoire, covered by his most respected peers (João Bosco, Chico Buarque, and Caetano Veloso) and the next generation's rising stars (Chico Cesar, Daniela Mercury, and Zélia Duncan).

But Djavan is often his own best interpreter, with a gift for crafting sophisticated, jazz-tinged arrangements. While some critics felt his 1990s output flagged into easy-listening pop, each release contains several memorable tracks, and his popular following remained strong at the end of the decade, as evidenced by his million-selling double album, "Ao Vivo."

Boston-raised jazz pianist Aaron Goldberg, a Brazilian music aficionado who has spent considerable time in the country and speaks Portuguese, first encountered Djavan's music when he bought his 1980 masterpiece, "Alumbramento," at the old Tower Records in Harvard Square. After listening to the album two or three times, he had absorbed several songs, including "Triste Baia de Guanabara" and "Lambada de Serpente" (a piece Goldberg memorably explored on his 2006 album, "Worlds.")

"I still play them with my trio, and not because they lend themselves to obvious jazz interpretations, but rather simply because Djavan knows how to drive a melody right into your heart," Goldberg says. "In very Brazilian fashion, Djavan proves again the power of pure songwriting to transcend cultural boundaries."