Baden Powell: One Of The World’s Great Guitarists
My dad picked up a guitar in Brazil, a beautiful handmade thing made of unusual woods and a really wide neck that never tapers. He used to play bossa nova and samba songs for us when my sister and I were kids, and it never dawned on me that not every dad does this. He’d play Baden Powell songs, but he was more of a chord-strummer than a finger-picker, so I was pretty astounded when I heard the actual Baden Powell records. To call him a virtuoso is a gross understatement. The guy is Django Reinhardt good, and on sheer musicianship alone the records succeed. But there’s more to Baden Powell (named after Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts!) than that. He has a protean way of synthesizing genres, bringing together the melodicism and syncopation of bossa nova, the scale explorations of jazz, and the complicated rhythms of samba. Hell, there’s plenty of classical influence in there, too. In a way, it’s archetypal Brazilian music, though less song-oriented than, say, Caetano Veloso.
“Samba Triste” is an enduring favorite, covered by Stan Getz and more.Dig that guy going crazy on the cuica! That’s the percussion instrument that sounds like moving your straw up and down in the top of a fast food soft drink cup.
Here he is in 1999, a year before his death.
Enjoy!