Baden Powell de Aquino (; 6 August 1937 – 26 September 2000), known professionally as Baden Powell, was a Brazilian guitarist. He combined classical techniques with popular

harmony In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches ( tones, notes), or chords. Howeve ...

and

swing Swing or swinging may refer to: Apparatus * Swing (seat), a hanging seat that swings back and forth * Pendulum, an object that swings * Russian swing, a swing-like circus apparatus * Sex swing, a type of harness for sexual intercourse * Swing ri ...

. He performed in many styles, including

bossa nova Bossa nova () is a style of samba developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is mainly characterized by a "different beat" that altered the harmonies with the introduction of unconventional chords and an innovat ...

samba Samba (), also known as samba urbano carioca (''urban Carioca samba'') or simply samba carioca (''Carioca samba''), is a Brazilian music genre that originated in the Afro-Brazilian communities of Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century. Havi ...

Brazilian jazz Brazilian jazz can refer to both a genre, largely influenced by bossa nova and samba, that exists in many nations and the jazz music of Brazil itself. Música instrumental Brasileira The term "música instrumental Brasileira", which literally m ...

, Latin jazz and MPB. He performed on stage during most of his lifetime. Powell composed many pieces for guitar, such as "Abração em Madrid", "Braziliense", "Canto de Ossanha", "Casa Velha", "Consolação", "Horizon", "Imagem", "Lotus", "Samba", "Samba Triste", "Simplesmente", "Tristeza e Solidão", and "Samba da Benção". He released '' Os Afro-sambas'', a watershed album in MPB, with

Vinicius de Moraes Marcus Vinícius da Cruz e Mello Moraes (19 October 1913 – 9 July 1980), better known as Vinícius de Moraes () and nicknamed O Poetinha ("The little poet"), was a Brazilian poet, diplomat, lyricist, essayist, musician, singer, and playwrigh ...

in 1966.

Biography

Baden Powell de Aquino was born in

Varre-Sai Varre-Sai (, ''Sweep Before You Part'') is a municipality located in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-mo ...

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...

, Brazil. His father, a

Scouting Scouting, also known as the Scout Movement, is a worldwide youth Social movement, movement employing the Scout method, a program of informal education with an emphasis on practical outdoor activities, including camping, woodcraft, aquatics, hik ...

enthusiast, named him after Robert Baden-Powell. When he was three months old, his family relocated to the Rio suburb of

São Cristóvão São Cristóvão (, ''Saint Christopher'') is a Brazilian municipality in the Northeastern state of Sergipe. Founded at the mouth of the Vaza-Barris River on January 1, 1590, the municipality is the fourth oldest settlement in Brazil. São Crist ...

. His house was a stop for popular musicians during his formative years. He started guitar lessons with Jayme Florence, a famous

choro ''Choro'' (, "cry" or "lament"), also popularly called ''chorinho'' ("little cry" or "little lament"), is an instrumental Brazilian popular music genre which originated in 19th century Rio de Janeiro. Despite its name, the music often has a f ...

guitarist in the 1940s. He soon proved a young virtuoso, having won many talent competitions before he was a teenager. At age fifteen, he was playing professionally, accompanying singers and bands in various styles. He was fascinated by

and

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

, but his main influences were in the Brazilian

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected string ...

canon. In 1955, Powell played with the Steve Bernard Orquestra at the Boite Plaza, a nightclub within the Plaza Hotel in Rio, where his skill got the attention of the jazz trio playing across the lobby at the Plaza Bar. When Ed Lincoln needed to form a new trio, he asked Powell to join on guitar to become the Hotel Plaza Trio. Powell brought in Luiz Marinho on bass and a fourth member of the "trio": Claudette Soares on vocals. Powell, Lincoln, and their young musician friends took part in after-hours jam sessions, gaining notice in the growing Brazilian jazz scene. Powell achieved wider fame in 1959 by convincing Billy Blanco, an established singer and songwriter, to put

lyrics Lyrics are words that make up a song, usually consisting of verses and choruses. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist. The words to an extended musical composition such as an opera are, however, usually known as a " libretto" and their writer, ...

to one of Baden's compositions. The result was called "Samba Triste" and quickly became very successful. It has been

covered Cover or covers may refer to: Packaging * Another name for a lid * Cover (philately), generic term for envelope or package * Album cover, the front of the packaging * Book cover or magazine cover ** Book design ** Back cover copy, part of copy ...

by many artists, including

Stan Getz Stanley Getz (February 2, 1927 – June 6, 1991) was an American jazz saxophonist. Playing primarily the tenor saxophone, Getz was known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, with his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre ...

and

Charlie Byrd Charlie Lee Byrd (September 16, 1925 – December 2, 1999) was an American jazz guitarist. Byrd was best known for his association with Brazilian music, especially bossa nova. In 1962, he collaborated with Stan Getz on the album ''Jazz Samba'', ...

in their seminal LP ''

Jazz Samba ''Jazz Samba'' is a bossa nova album by Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd released by Verve Records in 1962. ''Jazz Samba'' signaled the beginning of the bossa nova craze in America. Stan Getz was the featured soloist and the tracks were arranged by Char ...

.'' In 1962, Powell met the poet-diplomat

and began a collaboration that yielded classics of 1960s Brazilian music. Although

was the prevailing sound at the time, Baden and Vinicius wanted to combine samba with Afro-Brazilian forms such as

candomblé Candomblé () is an African diasporic religion that developed in Brazil during the 19th century. It arose through a process of syncretism between several of the traditional religions of West Africa, especially that of the Yoruba, and the Roman ...

umbanda Umbanda () is a syncretic Afro-Brazilian religion that blends traditional African religions with Roman Catholicism, Spiritism, and Indigenous American beliefs. Although some of its beliefs and most of its practices existed in the late 19th ce ...

, and

capoeira Capoeira () is an Afro-Brazilian martial art that combines elements of dance, acrobatics, music and spirituality. Born of the melting pot of enslaved Africans, Indigenous Brazilians and Portuguese influences at the beginning of the 16th cent ...

. In 1966 they released '' Os Afro-Sambas de Baden e Vinicius''. Powell studied advanced harmony with Moacir Santos and released recordings on the Brazilian labels

Elenco Records Elenco is a Brazilian record label established in 1963 by Aloysio de Oliveira. It was a major factor in the development of the bossa nova style, also releasing samba, jazz, and spoken word recordings. It is often considered one of the most influ ...

and Forma, as well as in the French label Barclay and the German label MPS/Saba (notably, his 1966 ''Tristeza on Guitar''). He was the house guitarist for Elenco, and of the singer Elis Regina's TV show ''O Fino da Bossa''. In 1968, Powell joined with poet

Paulo César Pinheiro Paulo César Francisco Pinheiro (born 28 April 1949) is a Brazilian poet and composer. One of the best poets of Musica Popular Brasileira, he wrote lyrics for a great number of songs for some of the best-known entertainers in Brazil. Among his co ...

and produced another series of Afro-Brazilian-inspired music, released in 1970 as ''Os Cantores da Lapinha''. Baden powell 1971

Powell visited and toured Europe frequently in the 1960s, relocating permanently to France in 1968. In the 1970s, he released recordings with labels in Europe and Brazil. In 1981, during four weeks, he was on the stage of Palais des glaces in Paris as guitarist and singer.« Variétés : Baden a surpassé Powell »,

Jean-Pierre Thiollet Jean-Pierre Thiollet (; born 9 December 1956) is a French writer and journalist. Primarily living in Paris, he is the author of numerous books and one of the national leaders of the European Confederation of Independent Trade Unions (CEDI), a ...

, ''

Le Quotidien de Paris ''Le Quotidien de Paris'' was a French newspaper founded in 1974 by . Along with ' and ', ''Le Quotidien de Paris'' made up the (Daily Press Group) which employed over 550 individuals," Philippe Tesson : « Mes trois critères d'appréciation » " ...

'', 3 June 1981. However, he had health problems and spent the 1980s in semi-retirement in France and Germany. In the 1990s he and his family moved back to Brazil, where he continued to record and perform. Public recognition of his work came around that time in Brazil. By the end of the 1990s he converted to

evangelical Christianity Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being " born again", in which an individual expe ...

, to which he credits overcoming his long addictions to alcohol and tobacco. He fell terminally ill in 2000 and died of general infection triggered by a bacterial

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severit ...

on 26 September 2000, in Rio de Janeiro. He is the father of pianist Philippe Baden Powell de Aquino and guitarist Louis Marcel Powell de Aquino.

Playing style

Baden Powell decided at age 19 to stop playing the

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gu ...

, preferring to concentrate on the

classical guitar The classical guitar (also known as the nylon-string guitar or Spanish guitar) is a member of the guitar family used in classical music and other styles. An acoustic wooden string instrument with strings made of gut or nylon, it is a precursor o ...

for the rest of his career. He did record a series of albums with a borrowed steel-string acoustic, but that is as far as he strayed from his main instrument in his adulthood. An analysis of his repertoire reveals a wide range of interests. It spanned all the idioms of Brazilian popular music of the 20th century:

, Afro-

bahia Bahia ( , , ; meaning "bay") is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the Northeast Region of the country. It is the fourth-largest Brazilian state by population (after São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro) and the 5th-larges ...

n ritual music, frevo,

, and North Eastern Sertão music, and even European and Japanese lullabies. Like most musicians growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, he was deeply influenced by

, especially

bebop Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumen ...

and

. He covered Thelonious Monk's " Round Midnight" on two recordings, and Jerome Kern's "

All the Things You Are "All the Things You Are" is a song composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics written by Oscar Hammerstein II. The song was written for the musical '' Very Warm for May'' (1939)classical guitar technique, with a very Brazilian right hand (the one carrying the rhythm on the guitar). In solo

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" al ...

, he was proficient in the works of Tárrega and

Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wor ...

. When playing in a group, he was able to accompany singers with quiet mastery, or let loose and play street samba in sloppy "party" style as if the guitar was another percussion instrument. Like Monk, he was fond of the minor second interval as a way to "bend" the tonality. However, because of his jazz background, he would rarely physically bend the string, preferring instead to play the minor second using an adjacent open string. Students of his style should note this preference for chord voicings that feature

extensions Extension, extend or extended may refer to: Mathematics Logic or set theory * Axiom of extensionality * Extensible cardinal * Extension (model theory) * Extension (predicate logic), the set of tuples of values that satisfy the predicate * Ex ...

on the open strings as a way of punctuating passages. Other idioms to watch for are the endless variations in rhythm played by the right hand, always within the proper samba meter, as well as his tendency to put his "signature" in a fast descending scale with a (slower) ascending

arpeggio A broken chord is a chord broken into a sequence of notes. A broken chord may repeat some of the notes from the chord and span one or more octaves. An arpeggio () is a type of broken chord, in which the notes that compose a chord are played ...

in the

relative key In music, relative keys are the major and minor scales that have the same key signatures (enharmonically equivalent), meaning that they share all the same notes but are arranged in a different order of whole steps and half steps. A pair of major ...

. He also used vocalise and scat singing, often in unison with the melody line (especially when the melody was sung on the bass strings of the guitar). His influences were his first teacher "Meira" (Jayme Florence, 1909–1982), Dilermando Reis (1916–1977), and Garoto (Anibal Augusto Sardinha, 1915–1955). He also commented about being influenced by the work of

Les Paul Lester William Polsfuss (June 9, 1915 – August 12, 2009), known as Les Paul, was an American jazz guitarist, jazz, country guitarist, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid body ...

(1915–2009), Django Reinhardt (1910–1953), and Jacques Loussier (1934–2019).

Discography

Baden Powell first appeared as accompanist on a few big band and samba recordings from the 1950s. He recorded his first solo album in 1959, but it was released in 1961. His first and second albums contain jazz standards, Brazilian popular music of the time, and original compositions. In 1962, he recorded with flautist Herbie Mann and drummer Jimmy Pratt. In 1963 he led small ensembles in Brazil and France. The French labels Barclay and Festival released many of his recordings. In Germany, MPS/Saba released his work with producer Joachim Berendt. In Brazil, he recorded for

, Forma, and the Brazilian subsidiary of

Philips Records Philips Records is a record label founded by the Dutch electronics company Philips. It was founded as Philips Phonographische Industrie in 1950. In 1946, Philips acquired the company which pressed records for British Decca's Dutch outlet i ...

. After a few new releases in the 1980s, Powell returned to recording studios in Brazil for his final years. His later recordings consist of solo guitar or voice and guitar.

Albums

With Herbie Mann *''

Do the Bossa Nova with Herbie Mann ''Do the Bossa Nova with Herbie Mann'' (subtitled ''Recorded in Rio de Janeiro with the Greatest Bossa Nova Players'') is an album by American jazz flautist Herbie Mann recorded in 1962 for the Atlantic label.Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

, 1962) *''

Latin Fever ''Latin Fever'' is an album by American jazz flautist Herbie Mann recorded for the Atlantic label and released in 1964.

'' (Atlantic, 1964) With

Miltinho Milton Santos de Almeida (January 31, 1928 – September 7, 2014), known professionally as Miltinho (Miltiño in Spanish), was a Brazilian singer of samba and bossa nova music. Early years Milton Santos de Almeida was born in Niteroi, Brazil ...

com o Sexteto Sideral *''Um Novo Astro'' (Sideral, 1960)

References

Bibliography

* De Stefano, Gildo, ''Il popolo del

, La vicenda e i protagonisti della storia della musica popolare brasiliana'', Preface by Chico Buarque de Hollanda, Introduction by Gianni Minà, RAI-ERI, Rome 2005, * De Stefano, Gildo, ''Saudade

Bossa Nova Bossa nova () is a style of samba developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is mainly characterized by a "different beat" that altered the harmonies with the introduction of unconventional chords and an innovat ...

: musiche, contaminazioni e ritmi del Brasile'', Preface by

Chico Buarque Francisco Buarque de Hollanda (born 19 June 1944), popularly known simply as Chico Buarque, is a Brazilian singer-songwriter, guitarist, composer, playwright, writer, and poet. He is best known for his music, which often includes social, economic, ...

, Introduction by Gianni Minà, Logisma Editore,

Firenze Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...

2017,

External links

Baden Powell
{{DEFAULTSORT:Powell de Aquino, Baden 1937 births 2000 deaths 20th-century classical composers Bossa nova guitarists Brazilian composers Brazilian jazz guitarists Brazilian male guitarists Brazilian Presbyterians Composers for the classical guitar Converts to evangelical Christianity Latin jazz guitarists Música Popular Brasileira guitarists 20th-century guitarists 20th-century male musicians Male jazz musicians Sunnyside Records artists MPS Records artists Deaths from pneumonia in Rio de Janeiro (state)