|
CDs
  
We
Remember...
Legendary
guitarist Baden Powell, one of the pioneers of Brazilian Bossa
Nova music, died Monday(9/26, 2000) in Rio de Janeiro. He
was 63. Powell was a prominent guitarist and bossa nova composer
from the same generation as Antonio Carlos Jobim, author of
"The Girl from Ipanema." He worked closely with
Jobim and famed Rio poet Vinicius de Moraes to create the
sensual rhythms and romantic lyrics that made bossa nova,
a mixture of soft instrumental jazz and samba, popular around
the world
Curiously,
Powell's father was a leader of the Brazilian Boy Scouts as
well as a guitar player, and was named for the British founder
of the Boy Scout movement, Robert Thompson Baden Powell.
He was born in 1937, in a small town in the state of Rio de
Janeiro but later moved to the music Mecca of Rio itself.
He grew up listening to samba but also was influenced by the
Afro-Brazilian culture from Brazil's northeast.
Powell
was a practiced technical master of the Brazilian guitar,
often blending jazz and classical styles into his Afro-Brazilian
mindset. Said Oscar Castro-Neves, "Baden was a monstrously
influential guitar player, a marriage of a great performer
and player. Very charismatic on stage, he was extremely influential."
He
penned "Samba Triste" at age 22. In 1962, he befriended
de Moraes to begin a collaboration that resulted in more than
50 songs together. The two took particular interest in the
candomblé rhythms of Bahia, resulting in classics like
"Berimbau" and the hypnotic "Canto de Ossanha."
After
a number of successes in his homeland, the mustachioed, bespectacled
man with thin fingers burst onto the international stage in
1966 and 1967 and eventually went on to play with such legends
as Thelonius Monk and Stan Getz. "Samba de Benção,"
one of his tunes, was featured in a 1966 hit romantic drama
by French film director Claude Lelouch "Man and a
Woman." The lyrics include this line (translated): "To
make a beautiful samba, you need a dose of sadness. You need
a bit of sadness, or it is not a samba."
He
wrote songs that were made famous by Brazilian singers such
as the late Elis Regina and Milton Nascimento. Some of his
best-loved songs included "Apelo" and "Deixa,"
as well as the Bossa hits "Consolação"
and "Tempo Feliz."
Powell
died in Rio de Janeiro's Sorocaba Clinic, of multiple organ
failure caused by pneumonia, where he was in intensive care
for the past month with health problems related to diabetes.
He was forced to cancel shows with Gal Costa when he was recently
hospitalized. "He was a guitar genius, a genius of the
Brazilian music," singer Leila Pinheiro told Globo television.
In
the last years of his life, Mr. Baden Powell joined the Presbyterian
Church, breaking away from Afro-Brazilian cults that inspired
many "sambistas." For religious reasons he stopped
singing some of his songs and, according to local media, the
church helped him to give up drinking.
Mr.
Baden Powell is survived by his wife and two sons, both of
them musicians. Following a vigil for the guitarist in Rio
de Janeiro's Chamber of Deputies, he was buried in Rio's St.
John the Baptist Cemetery. The cemetery is the resting place
for many of Brazil's famous musicians and public figures.
-
Reuters wire feed
|
