He was released from custody after two months. When the Brazilian singer-songwriter Gilberto Gil composed the allegorical samba Aquele Abraço, he violently described all the sensations he saw in the streets of Rio de Janeiro after his return to freedom: the Portela dance school, the Banda de Ipanema carnival group, the girls from the favelas, or slums.
For political reasons, he could not add that the representatives of the military dictatorship ordered him to go into exile as early as 1969. To pay for the plane ticket to London, he was only allowed to hold one last concert. On it, with this very composition, in secret and with feigned joy, he silently said goodbye to Rio, and therefore to Brazil.
This Friday, he gave the same composition to the festival visitors Colours of Ostrava, whose main stage he performed in the rain. The living classic of Brazilian music, Gilberto Gil, who contributed to the revival of Brazilian culture in the 1960s, sold millions of records and became Minister of Culture after the fall of the regime, came to the Czech Republic for the first time as part of a farewell tour. He turned eighty-one last month.
His concert was one of the most interesting events on the third day of the otherwise tough festival. After the British singer Ellie Goulding, the second main star, the Nigerian singer Burna Boy, dropped out late on Friday. According to director Zlata Holušová, the most expensive performer in the history of the event apologized due to a malfunction on the private plane. “The whole band, dancers and team were ready backstage. Only the singer was waiting,” the organizers wrote. They are now facing criticism on social networks that they did not announce the cancellation of the show sooner and left people waiting in the rain.
The large-screen screens in the area already warned of him around eight in the evening, before Gilberto Gil started to play. Atypically, only hundreds of people are waiting for him under the main stage. It starts to rain in the fourth track, the large screens gradually fall out, but the music doesn’t stop even for a minute.
Gilberto Gil arrives accompanied by an eleven-member line-up, all relatives, all dressed in white: from the eldest daughter Nara Gil, who was the first of his descendants to sing with him in the early 80s, to his only fourteen-year-old granddaughter, the vocalist Flor Gil. They have been performing in a similar composition for the second year, they recently performed at the prestigious jazz festival in Montreux, Switzerland.
Gilberto Gil played despite the rain. | Photo: Jiří Zerzoň
The Brazilian singer-songwriter was repeatedly hospitalized in 2016 due to heart problems. As soon as his condition improved, he went out into the world with his relatives for the last time.
Now they play different songs every night. With a short haircut and prescription glasses, with a gray beard and coral around his neck, Gil seems like a quiet and modest head of the family. He sings mostly with his eyes closed, except for a short trip to the front rows, he remains standing at the microphone. He is accompanied by guitarists João Gil and Francisco Gil, other relatives play keyboards, percussion, drums and trumpet, and the saxophonist also has a flute. There are three vocalists.
From the opening track Stage from 1981, written by Gil in fear that he’s worn himself out and no one cares anymore, set a nice, light uplifting mood. They don’t put on a show. They celebrate Gil’s life and work. It focuses on music that is airy, rhythmic, joyful despite a certain melancholy.
The main star accompanies himself throughout the evening on a dark blue electro-acoustic guitar from the American company Sadowsky with nylon strings, which is most often played with the finger and index finger with long nails. Gilberto Gil doesn’t perform well as a singer, the few songs he leaves to his singing daughters and granddaughter sound all the better.
The family atmosphere on stage is not as obvious from the first plan as in the second season of the documentary series, which is available in the Amazon Prime Video library peeps behind the scenes of their farewell show. One episode features the family home behind Rio de Janeiro, in another, relatives debate racism. Gilberto Gil, a black descendant of former slaves, has struggled with him since birth. He also brings the theme to the Ostrava concert when he sings in French Do not touch My friendhis song about racial intolerance inspired movement z 80. let.
One of Gil’s biggest hits, Aquele Abraço, which Colors visitors also heard, on a recording from the pandemic year 2021. Photo: Jiří Zerzoň | Video: Week-End Fest
Perhaps his most important moment in history came two decades earlier, when this seminal musical innovator and poetic author of highly literary texts combined acoustic Brazilian music – from samba to the carnival tradition – with African rhythms and Western rock.
Several songs in Ostrava remind us of this time when they belonged to the avant-garde group Tropicália with singer-songwriter Caetano Velos, singer Tom Zé and Rita Lee. It featured a psychedelic mood, surrealist lyrics and an anti-establishment vibe.
A broad cultural movement extending into poetry and theater called for the absorption of Western influences. It wanted to add an international dimension to Brazilian art. At a time of rapid social change, the so-called tropicalists faced similar opposition to student protestors in the US or France. However, because there was a dictatorship in Brazil between 1964 and 1985, Gil and Velos ended up in custody and were exiled to London for two years.
On Colors, the songs evoke this episode That hug or Black sheep dedicated to Rita Lee, who died two months ago at the age of 75. It will also come to Express 2222a composition written in exile in London before Gilberto Gil was allowed to visit home again in 1972.
He illustrates where his next journey was headed farm, the title track in the middle of a trilogy of records with which he returned to his roots in the 1970s. Although the opening words of this song about an avocado tree have been seen by some as a metaphor for a military dictatorship whose members wear clothes of the same color, Gil has always rejected this. “Refazenda tells purely about life in the countryside. It’s a celebration of nature and tuning in to its rhythms,” he said.
He became explicitly involved only after the fall of the dictatorship in the 1980s. At that time he was elected to the council of Salvador, i.e. the capital of the federal state of Bahia, where he spent a significant part of his life. In 2002, he became Brazil’s Minister of Culture in the government of President Lula da Silva. In office, he utilized a lifelong interest in topics ranging from deforestation to the support of Brazilian ethnic groups. Gil was only the second non-white representative of a Brazilian state.
The position of minister of culture was abolished in 2019 by the later president Jair Bolsonaro, before it was restored again this year by the returning Lula da Silva. He did not call the veteran Gil back to the government.
The reggae song Vamos Fugir was played by Gilberto Gil and his family also at Colors in Ostrava. Photo: Jiří Zerzoň | Video: Amazon Prime Video
Gilberto Gil does not comment more extensively on politics on the Colors stage. Maybe only when he sings an encore Every Bahian Girl from 1979, the celebration of the state of Bahia, will be remembered by some as the same song pollen with former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Otherwise, Gilberto Gil prefers to introduce the Ostrava audience to the music of his country. “After samba, baião is the most important type of Brazilian music,” he mentions at one point. He then sings in this dance style come brunette, a cover version of the song by Luiz Gonzaga, who popularized the genre after World War II. Under his influence, Gilberto Gil discovered music as a child and later dedicated an album to him Me, you, themwhich is also the soundtrack to the 2000 film of the same name.
In addition to bossa nova and samba, Colors also features reggae hits Let’s run away or Extra. They come from the 80s, when Gilberto Gil visited Jamaica and recorded with his peer Bob Marley’s band. He also dedicated the entire album to him.
The concert in the rain is just long enough, not massively attended, but a follow-up to the best of two decades of Colors dramaturgy. No other large Czech festival would give Gilbert Gil space on the main stage on Friday evening. It was a natural pairing of a festival that claims to be diverse, with a man who has served the diversity of his music and today embodies the full breadth of Brazilian culture.
2023-07-22 16:16:50
#Gilbert #Gil #unfazed #rain #expensive #performer #history #Colors #perform #Currently.cz
