São João da Boa Vista, BR · instrumental · world

Badi Assad

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A guitarist who plays voice, percussion and body as one instrument, classically trained and entirely her own.

Badi Assad was born in 1966 in São João da Boa Vista in São Paulo state and lived in Rio de Janeiro until she was twelve. Her father, Jorge Assad, of Lebanese descent, plays the bandolim, and her older brothers Sérgio and Odair Assad established themselves as classical guitarists before she did. She trained on classical guitar at the University of Rio de Janeiro and won a national young instrumentalists' contest there in 1984.

She built a style that treats the guitar as one part of a larger set of sounds, singing, humming, clicking and tapping as she plays, using mouth percussion and the body of the instrument alongside the strings and often layering several of those elements at once. She performs mostly alone, with the arrangement built in real time rather than handed to a band.

In 1986 she joined the Guitar Orchestra of Rio de Janeiro under conductor Turíbio Santos, and the following year was named Best Brazilian Guitarist at the International Heitor Villa-Lobos Festival. She toured Europe, Israel and Brazil with guitarist Françoise-Emmanuelle Denis as Duo Romantique, and released her first solo album, Dança dos Tons, in 1988.

A hand injury pushed her further into voice and percussion. Unable to play guitar between 1998 and 2001, she made a full recovery and returned with the collaborative album Nowhere in 2002, made with her former husband Jeff Young, followed by 3 Guitars in 2003 with jazz guitarists Larry Coryell and John Abercrombie.

Signed to Deutsche Grammophon in 2004, she released Verde, which recast U2's "One" and Björk's "Bachelorette" in her own style, and Wonderland two years later, reworking songs by Eurythmics, Vangelis and Tori Amos; the latter was selected among the BBC's 100 best CDs.

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