Baden Powell Baden Powell A Vontade

Soul Jazz Records/Universal Sounds Original Brazil Classics series.

Brazilian guitarist and composer Baden Powell successfully radicalised and revolutionised Brazilian music when his album 'Baden Powell A Vontade' was first released in 1964.

Powell and his songwriting partner, the celebrated Brazilian poet and diplomat Vinicius de Moraes launched with this album a new style known as Afro-Bossa, which connected Bossa Nova, Jazz and the heavyweight Afro-Brazilian rhythms of north-east Brazil to stunning effect.

After succeeding in launching the bossa nova movement with his fellow composer Tom Jobim and singer Joao Gilberto, the poet and diplomat, Vinicius de Moraes, this time in partnership with the genius young guitarist Powell, looked deep into Afro-Brazilian culture for his inspiration.

This resulted in a set of classic new songs such as Berimbau, Candomblé and Consoloçao all of which featured on the album Baden Powell a Vontade for the first time.

These songs became standards in Brazilian music almost overnight (and remain so today) having been covered by everyone from Elis Regina, Edu Lobo, Nara Leao, Sergio Mendes and many 100s more.

This album was the debut Baden Powell release on the super cool Elenco Records, an independent label in Rio de Janeiro set by Aloysio de Oliveira, that was at the forefront of the Bossa Nova scene throughout the early 1960s. Elenco Records released many stunning albums by Powell, Sergio Mendes, Tom Jobim, Nara Leao, Vinicius de Moraes and other legends of Brazilian music.

Baden Powell A Vontade features the iconic, stark and stunning artwork of the designer Cesar G Villesa, whose classic minimal black, white and red designs helped define the style of Bossa Nova throughout the world and for generations to come.