At long last, the much-awaited post on Baden-Powell! You might be wondering whether the founder of the scouts movement had a secret career as a Brazilian musician, but as it turns out, one of the greatest Brazilian guitar players of all times had a father who was a scouting enthusiast, hence the name. Baden Powell’s contribution to Brazilian-style guitar playing is in many senses comparable to the Bossa Nova revolution introduced by João Gilberto in the 1950s, albeit perhaps less well known internationally. He was already a respected jazz guitar player when he met the poet Vinicius de Moraes in the early 1960s -- who, among other masterpieces, had written the lyrics of ‘Garota de Ipanema’. They then started an extremely fruitful collaboration culminating in the album ‘Os Afro-Sambas de Baden e Vinicius’ (1966), where they mixed the samba and Bossa Nova rhythms from Rio with the Afro-Brazilian influence from Bahia.
It might seem somewhat strange that two born-and-raised cariocas (i.e. those born in Rio de Janeiro) should turn to Bahia and its strong African heritage (including capoeira and the religious traditions of Candomblé and Umbanda) for inspiration -- it might have resulted in something like ‘Bahian music for gringos’ -- and yet the result is stupendous. Everyone agrees that ‘Os Afro-Sambas de Baden e Vinicius’ is a revolutionary masterpiece, a turning point for Brazilian music. It illustrates how Baden Powell explored the limits of his instrument, often times no longer ‘sounding’ like an acoustic guitar at all.
To showcase this unlikely mix of a virtuoso guitar player, an aristocratic poet-diplomat and Afro-Brazilian music, nothing like the song ‘Berimbau’. Berimbau is the key instrument for the music accompanying the practice of capoeira, the Brazilian martial fight developed by the slaves who pretended it was just a dance while training for the real fight in their attempts to escape. The instrument you hear at the beginning of the song is a berimbau, and the beat is the characteristic capoeira beat. Below I’m posting the studio version first, and the a memorable video recording of a concert in Paris involving an all-star lineup: Vinicius de Moraes singing at the table, as he would if he were in his natural habitat, the pub; Tom Jobim at the piano; Baden Powell himself in red; Toquinho (Vinicius de Moraes’ main collaborator in later years, and also a fantastic guitar player); and singer Miúcha. The video is a medley of different songs of the Vinicius-Baden collaborations: ‘Berimbau’, ‘Consolação’ and ‘Canto de Ossanha’. And just so that you are truly convinced of Baden Powell’s extreme talent as a player, I’m also posting his rendition of the classic ‘Samba do Avião’, by Tom Jobim.
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