Baden Powell de Aquino: Songbook for Guitar

Baden Powell de Aquino, to give him his full name, was a Brazilian musician and composer born in 1937 and named by his father after the founder of the Scouting movement. Known professionally (if confusingly) as Baden Powell, he took up guitar at an early age, training with celebrated exponents of samba and choros such as Jayme Florence (also known as Meira), Raphael Rabello and Maurício Carrilho. In 1959 he recorded his first solo album, and in 1960 the bossa nova poet and lyricist Vinicius de Moares attended one of his concerts and was impressed. Their collaboration launched Baden Powell onto the international stage, and he went on to appear at the most celebrated jazz festivals in Europe and North America, as well as making many more albums. Later in life, he retired to Rio de Janeiro and died there in 2000. Baden Powell fused native and European idioms in a unique crossover style which brought together samba, folk song, choros, bossa nova and jazz. The published versions of his pieces are transcriptions of his own recordings. This presents a challenge for any new interpreter; how to remain faithful to Baden Powell’s text and creative personality while also staying true to the essentially personal and improvisatory nature of the idiom? In these studio-made recordings from May 2024, the Italian guitarist Andrea Monarda enthusiastically takes up this challenge, channelling the spirit of Baden Powell through his own free adaptations of 18 pieces from the published songbooks, amounting to ‘an interpretation of an interpretation’. His choice of songs covers roughly a decade of Baden Powell’s career, from the early 60s to the 70s, when his reputation and his inspiration were at their height.