Gilberto Gil had been living in exile for a month when he first saw Bob Dylan take the stage.
That was in August 1969, when Gil, who is now a revered international figure with a 60-year career behind him, had just turned 27. The military dictatorship in Brazil had “invited” him to leave the country after an arrest on charges of “inciting youth to rebel” during a show in Rio de Janeiro, among other accusations. Forced to flee, Gil chose London — a meeting point for musician and artist expats, with its vibrant cultural scene and artistic freedom — as his new home.
He arrived just in time for the Isle of Wight Festival and knew he couldn’t miss his chance to see Dylan play his first show since a motorcycle accident had nearly taken his life.
“It’s that passivity, almost,” Gil said in a recent interview. “That calmness he has onstage, without many exuberant gestures. That’s what I wanted to soak up and apply to my own performance.”
And through the years, whether his image was as an inciter of youth or an insightful philosopher, he did. Even as Gil stood onstage in São Paulo this April on his farewell tour, it was the eloquence of his words and the memories his music evoked that captivated 40,000 fans.
A chorus of voices accompanied Gil as he guided concertgoers through the many genres of his career — samba, baião, jazz, reggae, rock and international pop, among them. An innovator with a knack for preserving his country’s classic styles while building on them, Gil has used both his music and his voice to help fellow Brazilians feel pride in where they come from and hope in where they’re going. In addition to releasing dozens of albums, he has worked in politics since 1987 and served as Brazil’s Minister of Culture from 2003 to 2008.
Gil, now 83, admits that it’s time to slow down. He doesn’t shy away from talk about aging: It’s just another change in a life of metamorphosis. And the name he gave his final stadium tour — Tempo Rei (which translates to Time Is King), borrowed from his 1984 song about the passage of time, the brevity of life and the necessity of transformation — alludes to just that.
“The classifications of ‘last tour,’ ‘last chapter,’ ‘end of career’ are all valid,” he said. “I’m essentially on an excursion that will end a cycle that has lasted more than 60 years.”
But the decision to step away from live performance isn’t a step back from music, Gil insisted. It’s a way to reconnect with it.
“I’ll always have my guitar, my inseparable companion,” he said in a recent video interview from Rio, where he was taking a break between shows to spend time with family. “But my relationship with it will be more open, freer. It’s simpler when you don’t have as many commitments. I’ll have much more time to, eventually, get back to composing and maybe recording albums. My music will continue.”
Gil’s musical life began in the city of Salvador in northeastern Brazil, where as a child, he first heard the South African singer-songwriter and civil rights activist Miriam Makeba while listening to records at a friend’s house. It sparked his interest in how African music gave life to some of his favorite Brazilian sounds, and provided an early link between music and politics.
Inspired by the Afro-Brazilian musician Luiz Gonzaga, known as the King of Baião, Gil began learning his first instrument — the accordion — and at 17, he joined a band called Os Desafinados (the Out-of-Tunes), and turned his attention to bossa nova, a subtle new style coming out of Rio de Janeiro with syncopated melodies and jazz-inflected harmonies.
“I think that because of the nature of how Brazilian music itself came to be, I belong to a group of artists who were highly influenced,” Gil said. “I was born into this melting pot of musicality.”
His alliance with Caetano Veloso, who became a fast friend when they were introduced in 1963 by the producer Roberto Santana, would prove to be one of the most consequential of his career. Together with Veloso’s sister Maria Bethânia, Gal Costa, Tom Zé and the members of the band Os Mutantes, they spearheaded a cultural movement called Tropicália, which challenged the political and social norms of their country, blending the Brazilian styles of their youth with foreign influences, like pop and psychedelic rock. The music embraced ideas of unbridled personal freedom, and it inspired artists including David Byrne.
“What drew me to it was the sophistication — the musical sophistication but also the sophistication they had about their situation globally,” the Talking Heads frontman said in 1999. “What was ‘center,’ what was ‘periphery.’”
The military government did not approve of Gil and Veloso’s defiant playfulness, and so they found themselves in London, where they remained for three years, a period he now recalls as bittersweet.
“I had just rebuilt my life with Sandra,” he said, referring to his second wife, “and we had our son, the first of our three children, in London,” he said. “It was a domestic life that was austere, very simple, but at the same time there was this presence of Brazilian artists from all areas: music, theater, film. And there was this new environment with English artists who wanted to collaborate with us too. It was all of that, but then there was the longing for Brazil. There was so much distance. The lack of our language, having to learn English just to communicate and then also to compose songs. It wasn’t easy.”
“But,” he added, “I hold great gratitude for what London did for me during the dictatorship.”
Gil released his acclaimed 1971 self-titled album there. He played the Glastonbury Festival and in concert halls across Europe, and deepened his knowledge of reggae and jazz.
Upon his return to Brazil, his music became omnivorous, partaking of rock, reggae and African music while delving into Brazil’s cornucopia of local styles.
“I think I heard Gilberto Gil before I even knew that what I was hearing was Gilberto Gil,” said the Brazilian pop singer Iza, 34, known for her Afrobeats and R&B-influenced pop songs. “He’s part of my family’s imagination, the creation of my musical identity. He made me see that Brazilian music, Black music, is noble. He helps us feel like we’re part of something and can love where we came from.”
But Gil wanted to put more than music out into the world. As a child, he had watched his father — a doctor by profession — dabble in local politics when the family lived in Ituaçu, a small rural town in the northeastern state of Bahia.
“I spent a period of my childhood living in that world, with citizens, candidates, voters,” he said. “And in a way it left its mark on my soul and in my conscience.”
In the late 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost reforms became unlikely influences on Gil’s decision to enter the political ring. “That was when I understood that political life needed new impulses, new enthusiasm, new analyses,” he said.
His hopes of becoming a candidate for mayor of Salvador in 1988 were dashed following criticism from his more conservative party mates, who were uncomfortable not only with his choice of style — he preferred tunics over suits and wore earrings and an Afro — but also with some of his ideas, like preserving the environment and Afro-Brazilian culture. Instead, he ran for city council and won.
When he ultimately became Brazil’s minister of culture, he created programs to boost the country’s cultural, artistic and ethnic diversity. It was a rewarding time, he said, but it came with sacrifice.
“There were at least 10 years where I had to divide my time between politics and music,” he said. “And music suffered. It was probably the most difficult time in my music career.”
Now he is ready to wind down a bit. “I already feel older, more tired,” he said, “in need of a pace that’s less intense.”
His final tour is the first time Gil has done so many huge shows in a row — some crowds have exceeded 60,000 — and the response, he said, has been “surprisingly enthusiastic, above my own expectations.” Working alongside his sons, Bem and José Gil, who are both musical directors of the tour and play in his band, he created set lists divided by genre, selecting three to five songs in each that he knew audiences would want to hear one last time, some with new instrumentation and others, like “Procissão,” returning to their original arrangements.
He’s also been playing “Cálice” — a song filled with metaphors about freedom that he wrote during the military dictatorship in 1973 with Chico Buarque, but couldn’t release until 1978 because of censorship — live for the first time.
The tour has brought him joy, he said, but will leave him with saudade, a Portuguese word that is difficult to translate, but involves a sense of longing, yearning or nostalgia.
“It’s a mixed feeling,” he said. “At the same time that there’s newness, surprises in what I’m doing, it’s an experience I won’t continue to have.”
During the April show in São Paulo, for one, Gil made sure to play all the crowd-pleasers — “Aquele Abraço” and “Andar com Fé” were must-haves — and added compositions that marked his own life-changing moments, like “Domingo no Parque,” a fixture in Brazilian culture since Gil performed it on TV in 1967 with Os Mutantes.
As images of his life appeared on the giant screens behind him — intimate snapshots of his family, historical photos of Afro-Brazilian culture, portraits of his most important influences — Gil stood behind the microphone, a guitar in hand, and smiled.
The post Gilberto Gil Steps Away From the Stage, Vowing ‘My Music Will Continue’ appeared first on New York Times.
