Baden Powell, and Paulinho Nogueira deeply influenced my whole generation. In the 60ts there was a weekly TV show called “O Fino da Bossa” presented by the great singer Elis Regina where Baden played almost every week. Back to those fantastic days, we could find Baden’s records every where. We all want to play like him...
Before him, only Garoto and Laurindo de Almeida developed a special guitar playing created by their own.

Although, Baden's playing was more intense than his predecessors, he was a Samba specialist, one of the first guitarist who transposed to the guitar all the rhythms of the Brazilian percussion.
He simply showed everybody how to play the samba on the guitar, with authentic flavor and unique swing. His right hand was so powerful that almost reproduces a full samba school going down the hill with full gas.

His dedication to the Brazilian Popular Music also revealed hidden treasures.
For example, he was one of the first guitarist to play and record Garoto’s music. The famous song “Gente Humilde” was totally unknown until Baden presented it to Chico Buarque and Vinicius de Moraes, then, they wrote the lyrics and the song became a standard of the Brazilian repertoire.

Very often, we have the same attitude with Brazilian music and artists as with forests and fauna: we burn everything, there is nothing left... Our country has a very bad memory and does not care to preserve precious things.
Therefore the tradition was very important to Baden, the history of the Brazilian guitar was under his fingers. Pixinguinha, Noel Rosa, Tom Jobim, Vinicius de Moraes and many others, always have been included in Baden’s repertoire.

Baden Powell was also one of the greatest composers of Brazil. His cycle of Afro-Sambas written in partnership with Vinicius de Moraes is unique: this conceptualization of a song-cycle unified by musical and poetical style is commonplace in the classical music, but is rarely found in the popular music universe.
His original works include also many instrumental pieces that belongs now to the Brazilian Guitar literature, and represents an important part of it.
In my opinion, the albums to be listened are fundamentally “Os Afro-Sambas”, “Baden Powell à Vontade”, “Estudos”, and “Poema on Guitar”.