*From the collection of excellent interviews and reports by Marcelo Pinheiro
In the Santos Dumont lobby, the generous sip of the first cup of coffee of the day is interrupted by the approach of an old man. With wrinkled hands raised, full of Federal Lottery tickets, he announces the hot animals of the day: “Look at the monkey! Go zebra, there, go?” Annoyed with the indifference of his potential clients, the man leaves, surreptitiously, shouting that he should be in the square meter with the highest concentration of misers and misers in Rio de Janeiro.
Hours earlier, we left São Paulo once again in a bottle – a fight between Corinthians and Vasco residents, in the middle of Marginal Pinheiros – and arrived in Rio to also face the uncertainty of traffic that, every now and then, stops for petty or serious reasons like a crossfire. . Faced with such contingencies in large urban centers and the chance that, for better or for worse, will always invade our daily lives, we are not shaken; after all, we are going to meet the man who provoked and instigated a Brazil tamed by rifles, who packed with exuberant musicality messages that recommended courage to endure, because the order of the day demanded to be alert and strong, not to fear death and still allow dreaming that everything could be divine and wonderful.
In 1969, Gilberto Gil was very uncomfortable and divided public opinion. He had to leave Brazil in a hurry, leaving that hug to his family, friends, career and country, to land on a swinging' London who was already beginning to feel the symptoms of the hangover from his festive and hedonistic days. Gil crossed the ocean to plunge headlong into the late 1960s debauchery and contemplate possible ways out of that gigantic question mark left by the dream that was coming to an end, according to John Lennon's decree, which he himself reiterated and sang in Express 2222, an album imbued with a wild and nostalgic flavor, which had its recordings started in the final days of exile in London and was completed on his return to the country, in 1972.
Starting from experiences like this – as Caetano well defined it – Gil entered almost all structures and managed to get out of all of them. From the 1980s onwards, he exchanged the ambitions of the failed collective utopia of his generation for solid tools of power, acting as municipal secretary and councilor in Salvador and, later, as Minister of Culture, occupations that gave him disagreements and confrontations with severe critics. and opponents. Gil makes a positive assessment of all these adventures and says he is not afraid of the risks of such exposures. He admits he is not shy about making serious commitments motivated by spontaneous impulses and defends the high-risk concept that his work and life are inseparable.
With remarkable punctuality, he received us at his production company for a conversation, starting for two hours, which ended up extending to six more, when we invaded the intimacy of the small and relaxed family that gathers there to face hours of hard, meticulous and democratic work. , under the command of a serene “professor” – as bassist Arthur Maia affectionately refers to him – and the curious eyes of the giant Andrucha, a friendly São Bernardo, with an amputated tail, raised there since childhood. In the words of Gilberto Gil.
Brasileiros – In 1965, at the age of 23, you arrived in São Paulo newly married with the intention of establishing yourself as an executive. At the same time, he allied himself with Augusto Boal, in the show Arena Canta Bahia, becoming more and more involved in his artistic career. Was there a commitment to a greater family will in your choices, or did you see yourself playing the role of an ordinary citizen? Did you feel divided at this stage of your youth?
Gilberto Gil – I had been very naturally groomed to fit into a model of personal success, which was tied to family success, too. A Bahian, black, mestizo middle-class family project, which was something well established as a model and as an election by society as a whole. A consecrated way. He had been prepared for this, without much question. All of that was a complement to a broad set of elements of education and training. I followed in the footsteps and, evidently, life, my life, came into the question. I started working with music. I started to meet people. I found Caetano, Bethânia, Gal; theater people, in Bahia, people of different interests – for cinema, arts and varieties, for the existential question. Did all this go on to constitute another life, mine, my own, which, as you ask, was all in conflict? Did it establish a conflict? I didn't see it as such. I perceived them as parts of my life and somehow I had to attend to all of them. Naturally, one choice would supersede the other, very strongly, after my arrival in São Paulo.
In the days before his arrest, one of the fiercest critics of Tropicalismo was the playwright Augusto Boal himself, who classified the movement as neo-romantic, homeopathic, inarticulate, shy, gentle, imported and lacking in lucidity, coming to the irony of calling them Conjunto of Havaianos and classifying a statement by Caetano Veloso as crooked and reactionary. You are considered by many as a conciliatory subject. How did you interpret Boal's stance? Do you agree that he is, in fact, a conciliator?
Boal was a very engaged playwright and playwright. He devoted important parts of his action, his intellectual work and his capacity for reflection to this revolutionary movement thing. He had every right to disagree about anything, with anyone. In fact, he shared this feeling with many people, in relation to tropicalismo, that we were alienated, surrendered, dazzled. All this is a way of seeing and interpreting. I don't agree with him about Caetano's stupidity. I don't know if he understood Caetano's attitudes and gestures as being driven by scoundrels.
He defends this point of view in a reply to a comment by Caetano, published in the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, that “…everything is tropicalist: the body of Che Guevara and a cockroach flying behind a dirty fridge”. In the heat of the situation, it must have indeed sounded offensive to a lot of people.
I don't think any of us attributed to Guevara or anyone else involved in the revolutionary struggle this literal resemblance to a cockroach. On the contrary, the song “Soy loco por ti America”, for example, is a song in praise of Che and in recognition of the greatness and importance of a life like that, of an attitude like that. In addition, Boal's opinions were his opinions and corresponded to the vision he had of what it should be like to “be in the world” and, certainly, disagreeing with what would not be in accordance with this “being in the world”, according to Boal. But some things are exaggerated and out of place, such as considering the most exuberant set of Caetano's gestures to be a scoundrel.
In your most inventive works, you were often alongside maestro Rogério Duprat. Many even attribute an importance to his arrangements superior to the strength of the songs. How do you measure Duprat's participation in the tropicalist movement?
Duprat's presence in those works was fundamental for the conceptualization, properly, of the musical thing. What did we want with those compositions, how could they be “wrapped”, “packaged”, so that they would have the appeal that we wanted, that they needed to have. It was fundamental in the contact with the musicians, the Beat Boys, the Mutantes. It was he who introduced us to all these people and advised me to do “Domingo no Parque” with the Mutantes and not with the Quarteto Novo, as I wanted. He thought that with Os Mutantes we would be more daring, we would integrate the contemporary elements that the composition itself wanted. It was fundamental, because he was not simply a maestro in the sense of decoupage, from tradition to the musical field, he was also a philosopher of the young question, he had had, in the field of classical music, important interventions, bold and as daring as Tropicalismo, he already he was a tropicalist in this sense. He helped a lot, not only to establish the musical standard of tropicalismo, but also the conceptual, philosophical and political question itself. In all this he had a very strong contribution. I'm not one of those people who thinks that without Rogério it would have resulted in the same thing. He was fundamental. It was as important as me, Caetano, Torquato, Capinam. This is one of the important characteristics of tropicalismo: it was a collective action. The whole depended on the parts and each part played a very important role. Duprat, without a doubt, is a great example of this.
On the streets of Manhattan,
in 1971. Gil debuts
in New York at
same stage on which
Bob Dylan made his
first presentation
His departure into exile coincides with the day of the death of Brian Jones, founder of the Rolling Stones. Months later, a black man would be cowardly murdered in front of the stage where the same Stones were playing and John Lennon would decree that the dream was over. How was the arrival in London back in 1969 and the confrontation with this new reality? Were there even traces of a cycle closing?
My arrival in London coincides with this moment of apex of the movement hippie, of the psychedelic culture, of all those great social, behavioral mutations. I arrived exactly at the moment of the breakup of the Beatles and the death of Brian. Soon after, Lennon's speech: the dream is over! There was even a kind of boredom, of tiredness, which was a natural thing. All of that was born out of very impetuous impulses from the youthful condition, and as people matured, four, five, six years later, a natural distaste for it all began to emerge. Fatigue and victimization, often. People who were falling down in the middle of the way. The very perception of the utopian dimension of it all. Reality's response was not exactly in terms of the investment made with the intention of changing it; a lot was changed, but it wasn't that strong response. The truth was refractory, difficult. Even here, we all experienced a lot of it. Tropicalismo had also been hit hard here, with the final interdiction, imprisonment, and expulsion from the country. All this provided enough elements for us to feel these difficulties and translate them as the end of a dream. I think the expression has a lot to do with it: a fatigue of that whole movement, of that hyperactivity that youth had at that moment. I shared a lot of this perception.
in your book Green Valleys of the End of the World (Editor L&PM Pocket), Antônio Bivar narrates the fantastic appearance of you and a group of more than 20 people on stage at the Isle of Wight Festival, a kind of British successor to Woodstock. He says that after the presentation, CBS executives wanted to hire the entire group. How was that experience?
The Brazilian community was numerous, very expressive, in London. Very united, almost all of us leaving Brazil in search of new experiences. Many, like me and Caetano, were relatively victimized by the issue of dictatorship. We all went to the Isle of Wight. We camped, took up a whole ravine, on top of one of those hills, stayed there with our tents, three or four days before the performances started. Lots of music, lysergic acid, mescaline, all that stuff. Cláudio Prado, filmmaker and cultural producer, walked around the camp and talked to everyone. He learned that from the morning to the afternoon of the opening day, musicians and amateur artists were being invited to do a parallel program with the things that came up there. Cláudio said: “Come on, people are calling us to introduce ourselves!” Caetano was there, Gustavo and Pedrinho, from Bolha, the musician boys who were there and other Brazilian artists. Martine, a Belgian plastic artist, a friend of the group, had made a huge centipede out of red plastic. We put all this together, the guitars that were there, we went to the stage with about 20 people, several of them naked, wearing the centipede. There was a performance where, all of a sudden, people came out of the centipede naked, and we improvised and sang some songs. It was around one in the afternoon and the whole audience was very excited about it all. It was very much in the style of the things all that crowd liked and wanted. I remember that, in the general report on the festival, the magazine Rolling Stone made our presentation very prominent, but I don't remember any record executives wanting to sign us, no.
Interesting that all this positive repercussion took place at a festival where big names like Jimi Hendrix and The Who made average presentations, isn't it? By the way, days later, Jimi Hendrix died, how did you get the news?
One of the magical things about this stay on the Isle of Wight was meeting Hendrix. I remember that we were watching a show by Miles Davis, a group in which Airto Moreira, a Brazilian percussionist, participated, and we were very close to the stage. Me, Caetano, Dedé, Sandra, Cláudio Prado, all this gang. Airto ended up seeing us and signaled for us to go to the dressing room, in the backstage, after the show. We went, and there we found, among other people, Jimi Hendrix, who Airto, very kindly, offered to introduce us. We talked for ten minutes there, he was ready, dressed in the clothes to do the show. A week later he went to Germany, gave a presentation, returned to London and stayed in a hotel on Kensington Park Road, about a hundred meters from my house, which was in an alley on this same avenue, and we had the news. A friend of ours, an American, who had lived in Brazil at the time of Tropicalism and was living in London, had been with Hendrix at a dinner three or four days before his death and, the next day, was with us, reporting her state of extreme paranoia. He was talking about persecution; from the mafia, who wanted to force him to fulfill agendas that were in her best interest, who wanted to eventually take over the Electric Ladyland studio and things like that. She was very scared and passed this scare on to us. When we learned of his death, we were still experiencing the impact of this information.
Months before returning to Brazil, you performed in New York, at Folk City, set by Hélio Oiticica. The venue is famous for having hosted the first Bob Dylan concert. What was your impression of the American public? In those days, October 1971, you were performing for the first time in the United States, doing shows in Paris, and were you already planning to return to Brazil? Was the time opportune?
I don't remember if we ever had a perspective back. When we left the country, the military's recommendation was that we stay there and put aside any idea of returning. I don't remember if, in 1971, the negotiations that some of our relatives and close people started to do with the military, so that we could return, had already started. I have the impression that they took place at the beginning of 1972, when Caetano returned, a little before me. In any case, going to New York was much more within the perspective of exploring the general field of new possibilities from outside. Reception was very good. The audience was basically American; the invitation and promotion came from Americans. Of course, I remember that one of them was connected to Brazil, was involved with Arena, Boal, and invited me. Hélio lived in New York at the time and practically came inside the package. When they invited me, they announced that the whole setting was going to be done by him, who used stones, water. It was a direct allusion to the Tropicalia, to his own work. It reconstituted those elements a bit – there was also a television. It was a very interesting week in off broadway, one of the events that consolidated in me the feeling that it was possible to make an international career, something that came to be even, years later, in 1978, after the Montreux Jazz Festival.
On the eve of your departure into exile, you became close to the Swiss musician Walter Smetak who, during the period he taught at the Federal University of Bahia, became a kind of guru to Tom Zé and Caetano Veloso. When he returned, this friendship went beyond the musical question and turned to mystical interests. How did you get involved?
As for Smetak, when I returned from London, I found him actively calling on musicians, young artists, to join his work, to join in the dissemination and expansion of the field of research that he had been doing, and I was delighted with it all. One of the characteristics of his work was also this desire to move the musical, cultural and political reality to another level and it was me, filmmaker André Luíz de Oliveira and graphic artist Rogério Duarte, to work with him, make the microton orchestra, help on the issue of sound plastics, classification, use and conservation of instruments. We made two albums with him, we promoted concerts in Bahia, in São Paulo, it was a very important job. Smetak was a kind of magician of sounds and had a deep feeling of rupture with classicism, with the Pythagorean dictatorship. He was an open, fantastic experimentalist, and I identified with him a lot.
Jorge Benjor and you are notorious for the rhythmic force of their guitars. It was by wielding a pair of them that they launched, in 1975, Gil & Jorge, Ogun/Xangô, a completely anarchic album, indifferent to any commercially viable standards of the time. Given the freedom to improvise and the length of the tracks, the impression you get is that you had a free pass from the label. How were the sessions? Who did the idea for the joint album come from?
We had a free pass, yes. Jorge is very audacious, although it may not seem like it, due to the set of things, his behavior, the way he reacts to the world, the things he says, in short, it doesn't seem like it, but in the artistic thing, in the musical realization, he it's very bold, very loose, very free. He is one bluesman, as if he were one of those libertarian Americans, strong and all. Who led the record to that situation was Jorge. I remember very well a moment when we had prepared a song for him to record, and we were there: “…let's rehearse the tonality“. We started: "…it's recording!” He ordered the intro and went into another song. He entered “Morre o burro stays o homem”, which was not the one we were going to record and I followed, we all followed, and it was just like that. For you to realize the degree of freedom, improvisation, relaxation of the sessions. It is a very celebrated record and equally dear to us. An album that marked us a lot, to the point that, from time to time, we talk about re-editing it so that we can meet again. I have a lot of desire and so does he. It is possible that it still happens.
Still in the 1975/1976 biennium, in this short period, you released this album with Jorge, refarm, was in full activity with the Doces Bárbaros, when the episode of the arrest for possession of marijuana in Florianópolis happened. All demanding an ethical stance on their part. Today, despite greater tolerance for marijuana and the use of much more harmful synthetic drugs, the taboo with marijuana still remains largely veiled. Just remember that the minister Carlos Minc had to explain his adhesion to the march that defends the drug. Based on this personal experience, which scenario do you think is worse, Gil?
Look, I have been, for a long time, together with many people, advocating liberation. I think that the transformation of the drug problem into a case of public health, a medical problem, is advantageous in relation to what exists today, which is the issue of clandestineness, of trafficking. It's not just a police issue. Today there are two questions. The public health problem, with crack, is alarming, destroying young lives all over the world. It is a very serious problem, potentiated by the dimension of crime. I have the impression that if we were to have only the public health problem, it would be an advantage. Although, in the beginning, perhaps, the release provoked more intense waves of abuse, I think that, in the medium term, we would control with policies of disincentive and with the fall of the fetish, which is one of the main appeals. I continue to advocate this very clearly. There is no justification for prohibition that is, to me, more convincing, more interesting than the idea of liberation.
From the 1980s onwards, you become involved in the exercise of politics, in a journey that began at the Secretary of Culture of the city of Salvador, passed through the City Council, a frustrated pre-candidacy for Salvador's mayor and culminated in the five years to in front of the Ministry of Culture. How do you critically view this trajectory? Do you think the long gaps between the performance of your duties had any impact on your performance? Is it plausible to expect a continuity of this aspect of your public man?
I think the hiatuses are very clear proof that I was never interested in pursuing a political career. They are spasmodic facts, they arise from sudden stimuli. In the case, for example, of Bahia, it was Gorbachev, Perestroika and Glasnost. All that failure of that Soviet monster, that was very exciting for me, in order to make me interested in contributing to the political life thing and I asked Mario Kertesz, who was mayor of Salvador, if he would give me the opportunity to work with him, in the Secretary of Culture. He gave it to me and I went. Hence, as a consequence, the attempt to run for mayor, frustrated and, at the request of the political group, the candidacy for councilor, which resulted in another four years of political life, there in Salvador. I left there and only got to have another engagement, now, with the Ministry of Culture, because of President Lula's invitation, which I found undeniable, because of Lula's significance, his election, having the history he has, being who it is, the meaning it has for its trajectory and the entire emancipatory saga of Brazilian society. I thought I could, that this wouldn't exactly be a problem for me. The problem would be to face the actual management of a ministry and the relations with the government, the relations with society, the political problems arising from this, the struggles, the Ancinav-type battles (National Film and Audiovisual Agency), among others, but because of President Lula and the meaning of his presidency, I decided to take all these stops and now I'm free. I'm on hiatus again.
You, who witnessed all of President Lula's mishaps until he came to power, what assessment do you make of this cycle that will close in 2010. Do you think the president will achieve a transfer of votes capable of frustrating Tucano expectations?
The tradition of alternation is very strong. Societies like to operate with alternation as an element of variation, of fertilization, of enrichment of political life, of balances and balances. It is possible that there is even a tendency, even unconscious, in Brazilian society, in the sense of electing someone who is not Lula. At the same time, his strength is very great. It will have a very large capacity to transfer votes. Everything will depend on the various candidacies that are there, framed. The candidacy of Minister Dilma, highlighted, and the candidacies of the other parties, the toucans and others that will come around. Now, what does the government of President Lula mean for Brazil, I don't need to talk about that. Recent events here, internally, and in the world speak very well. The traffic he has today, the prestige he has acquired around the world and among the Brazilian population, are no coincidence. This insistence he had on investing very heavily in the social issue, which was something Brazilian society had been asking for for a long time. I think all this makes his government a very important government, very interesting for the history of Brazil.
Returning to the music, you come from a period where even the packaging was conceptually linked to the work. Today, with new technologies turning intellectual property upside down, the concept of closed works dying and people consuming music at random – going to their download sources and downloading one track or another –, how do you see these times? Is it a greater challenge to find inspiration in a setting so indifferent to the artist's efforts?
I think the artist's efforts have to be reviewed. The artist himself is being forced to review what effort means and what the possible directions for guiding this effort mean. These are facts: the impact of technologies – and this has been the case in several fields – ends up imposing visions and directions for human life. These are irrefutable technologies. They hurt classic models, therefore, the efforts of all of us have to be reviewed. At the same time, it is possible to admit forms of resistance. Caetano's record Zii and Zie is a fine example of this resilience. I had the impression – and it is an impression that I continue to have in relation to music production in general – that records, as they were conceived and made, are becoming increasingly difficult to exist, but Zii and Zie is an advocate of this position. Recovers that ability of you to like an entire disc, closed; songs and meanings that follow one another, thicken, from song to song, and end up closing a concept of a certain work. This is confirmed in this album by Caetano, but, at the same time, it is an album that already benefits from this deconstruction of the closed work. He started with the Work in Progress and benefited from this site in which it dialogued widely with various sectors of Brazilian society and other parts of the world, under its creation process. I think this is a good example. This ability to, at the same time, resist and re-exist would be an example of a way out.
In your last show in Osasco, São Paulo, you opened the sequence Security Rock, Luar e periphery punk, saying that he let himself be influenced by the rock made by the generation of bands that emerged in the early 1980s. Now, it wouldn't be much better if the opposite happened, if they were inspired by the rock you were doing 15 years earlier, in a much more effective way and well resolved as a syncretic product?
I don't know if this assessment of the interesting aspects of what I've done, previously, and the value that has, I don't know if I can agree on that whole value. What I did with rock was always to use a kind of breath, a fragrance that rock spread around. That perfume, that air. With that I built my pieces. You take, for example, a piece like Back in Bahia, to go in a very rock moment: that there is a ball! The pretext is rock, but the essence, even, of the musical performance, in the composition, at the moment when I wrote and sang those verses, I sang in the fashion of an embolada. That is, therefore, hybrid. A Brazilian thing with elements of rock.
But it is precisely this difference in purpose that distances his production from that period from much of what was done by this generation, which was often dedicated to copying stereotypes and foreign matrices.
These boys, many of them, in their due proportions, also had a similar attitude. mixed. The case of Cazuza, which had very clear elements of the samba-canção, the Brazilian ballad, the bolero, the song of the fossa; the case of Paralamas, where the Brazilian and Caribbean rhythmic elements meet. Many of them also did the opposite: they went, orthodoxly, to seek a reproduction in Brazil of an English rock, an American rock. In both cases, with interesting degrees of success. To this day, I think a lot of the work that Lulu Santos has done is sensational. Raul Seixas' albums are anthological, extraordinary. Rita's post-Mutantes work is wonderful. I see myself very well as a follower of them and not the other way around.
A beautiful moment of his performance in Osasco, last May, was when his grandson Bento invaded the stage, asking his father, Bem, to participate in the show, and came out to “play” a mandolin, for more than two songs. How does musical learning take place in the Gil clan? Is it a natural choice for the children or would you admit some excess of influence?
All of them had this type of access: to instruments, to stages, to parties, to the long sessions of listening to records that were held at my house, at Caetano's house, at the house of relatives, friends. All my children since Nara grew up in this environment. Narinha, for example – we even paid tribute to this fact, when we recorded “Wait until tomorrow”, by Jimi Hendrix, at the Tropicalia 2 -, we called Narinha to record with us because she, a little girl, at one and a half years old, at Caetano's house, back in São Paulo, repeated the “…think you better wait till tomorrow” by Jimi Hendrix with great pleasure. She was one and a half years old and already exposed to all that, already with that impregnation of all kinds of music. They are created that way and Bento is repeating it. He comes here to the studio, picks it up, plays the instruments, plays percussion with us, sings parts of the songs. It's cultural, an environmental thing for them, and then they choose what they want. Nara chose to be a singer, today she is a singer. Then Pedro, who chose to be and was a drummer; Preta and Bem, who also chose to be artists. Several of them have chosen.
Your stage performance is very impressive. The disposition and energy with which she wields the guitar, sings and captivates the audience is surprising. Can you already imagine when your artistic retirement will take place? Do you have plans for a calmer old age or will music remain a therapy for longevity?
I like, I still like, a lot, to play. I see it all as gymnastics, too. That's where I exercise, where I keep in shape. It is there that I purge certain things, that I make a catharsis with elements of energy renewal. Retirement is something out of perspective for me. Life will have to retire me, not me.
in the song others saw, from your latest album, you mention the poets Maiakovski and Walt Whitman, the novelist Stefan Zweig and other famous characters who, at some point, extolled Brazil's vocation to be the country of the future. You, whose life is inextricably linked to the country's recent history, what future do you foresee for Brazil?
I think what is new for Brazil, for Brazilians and, in a certain way, for the world, too, in relation to this issue, is that it seems that it is no longer the future, it seems that it is now. It is looking, for the first time, with a very great acceleration of the world, of life, that this distance has disappeared. Suddenly, the present is already the future. Brazil is in the future of the world and the future of the world is in Brazil. These two things are already starting to coincide, which establishes the most blatant perception of this, both for us Brazilians and for the world. The country's recent history has to do with all of this. The great tropical baroque festival, the carnival, this extraordinary capacity for celebration, this stoic experience of tragedy, this capacity that the country has been developing to live its tragic dimension in a proud and, at the same time, conformed way, in order to stimulate the reactions , contestations, the struggle to obtain the best. I think all this is what Brazil is today. What is being and what will be Brazil, from now on: a country increasingly similar to the world, in a world increasingly similar to this country.
