BIDDING BADEN GOOD-BYE.

• Author: Holston, Mark
• Position: Brazilian guitarist Roberto Baden Powell de Aquino

The man universally heralded as perhaps Brazil's finest guitarist of all time died September 26, 2000, at the age of sixty-three, leaving a legacy of half a century of music-making that set new standards for innovation, technical excellence, and stylistic breadth. The artist known to his countrymen simply as "Baden" set an example for artistic curiosity, dedication, to a demanding craft, and personal dignity that will influence Brazilian musicians for generations to come.

Roberto Baden Powell de Aquino was born August 6, 1937, in the small town of Varre e Sai in the State of Rio de Janeiro. He came by his highly unusual name--for a Brazilian, at least--due to his father's admiration of the founder of the Boy Scout movement, the British adventurer Sir Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell.

The Aquino family was deeply involved in music. Baden's grandfather had been the conductor of the first all-black symphony orchestra in Brazil. His father, a leader in the Brazilian Boy Scout organization and a shoemaker by trade, was also a violinist who performed with local orchestras and often invited such well-known musicians as Pixinguinha to the family's home for jam sessions.

At the age of eight, as Powell recalled years later, "I stole my first guitar from my aunt, because I was a very shy guy and was afraid to ask her." Sensing his son's innate musicianship, Lilo de Aquino arranged for the boy to take private lessons from Jaime Florence, who provide the talented youngster with a well-grounded introduction to the European classical tradition and the artistry of such leading exponents of the classical guitar as Spain's renowned Andres Segovia.

Within a year, Powell was performing on nationally broadcast radio programs. By the tender age of thirteen, he was being regularly engaged to perform at private functions. Two years later, he had graduated to accompanying such famed popular singers of the day as Elizete Cardoso and Dolores Duran as a member of the National Radio Orchestra. While still in his teens, he was firmly established as one of Brazil's most promising young guitarists, performing in Rio with pianist Ed Lincoln's group and beginning to write and publish his own compositions.

Then, in the late 1950s, the arrival of a new style, the revolutionary bossa nova, solidified his stature as one of Brazil's premier instrumentalists.

Among the core group of Brazilian composers, instrumentalists, and vocalists who popularized the bossa nova movement...