IMN : Updates for Gilberto Gil

REVIEW: Gilberto Gil Presents Hot Jam of World Music

IMN

November 21st, 2012

from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Concert review: Gilberto Gil presents hot jam of ‘world music’
By Rick Nowlin

Brazilian music icon Gilberto Gil was scheduled to perform a concert at the Byham Theater on Thursday night. But the numerous expatriate Brazilians in the audience had to know — and, truth be told, I suspected — that a dance party would eventually break out.
The 70-year-old Mr. Gil, also a major political figure in his home country, plays that kind of music. No, not just or even primarily the samba and more laid-back bossa nova that come to mind when most people think of “Brazilian music” but the folk and pop of the northeastern region of that large country.

What Mr. Gil referred to as the music of his childhood is truly “world music” — of course with Afro-Brazilian percussion at its heart but also elements of American funk, Celtic, European and even a little Jamaican reggae thrown in for spice.

Not only that, but the six-piece backup band was incredibly tight, not a note out of place. There weren’t any extended jams during the 18-song set plus encore, but perhaps the music doesn’t call for a lot of individual virtuosity.

It took a while for things to start cooking and then boil over. Only during “Assim Sim,” the third number, did Mr. Gil, who also plays rhythm guitar and displayed the moves of a man less than half his age, get the audience clapping in rhythm. During the medley of “No Mundo do Lua” and “Gilo/Expresso 2222” people began dancing, Mr. Gil doing a call-and-response with guitarist Sergio Chiavazzoli during the former. But the dam finally burst halfway through the show during “Andar com Fe,” the aisles filling with dancers.

As a bit of a surprise, Mr. Gil and company offered Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” and “No Woman No Cry,” the latter featuring Mr. Chiavazzoli on a searing solo. The most intimate moment came with the ballad “Lamento Sertanejo,” during which Mr. Gil was backed only by accordionist Toninho Ferragutti and violinist Nicholas Krassik. Yes, accordion and violin, certainly not instruments usually associated with Brazilian music.

As someone who’s uninformed, I appreciated Mr. Gil’s brief history lesson about its origins; the songs “Xote da Meninia” and “Xodo,” for example, came from Scotland via the Portuguese royal family, which two centuries ago settled in exile in Brazil. Mr. Krassik especially shone here.

The band really let loose during the instrumental “Casamento da Raposa,” bassist Arthur Maia throwing down the groove and Mr. Chiavazzoli tearing into his electric ukulele, ultimately evolving into a battle royal between drummer Jorge Gomes and percussionist Gustavo Di Dalva. Mr. Gil allowed the crowd to chant the lyrics to the encore of “Barracos.”
Now, if I could only learn Portuguese.

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REVIEW: Gilberto Gil at Dominion-Chalmers United Church

IMN

November 20th, 2012

from Ottowa Citizen

Gilberto Gil at Dominion-Chalmers United Church (concert review)
By Peter Hum

Normally, we sit still in church. The exception: when Gilberto Gil is leading the congregation.

It took a little while for the Brazilian music star to work his magic at Dominion-Chalmers United Church on Tuesday night. But eventually, the exuberance of his visceral, deeply rhythmic music as well as the lanky, seemingly tireless 70-year-old’s charisma brought most of the people to their feet. The most enthusiastic among them, including many Brazilian expats, were only content if they could crowd the front of the stage to shake and shimmy as if nothing but the uplifting music mattered.

For the uninitiated (as opposed to the fans gleefully singing along), Gil’s music had at once the sound of the familiar and the foreign. As Gil explained during some of the breathers between his high-energy numbers, he was performing music, written by himself and others, that was rooted in the folkloric sounds of Northeastern Brazil. During the course of Gil’s two-hour set, his powerhouse seven-piece group ran through about 20 songs that at times would have brought accordion-driven Cajun music to mind or violin-centred Celtic reels. But meanwhile, insistent Brazilian percussion — the pounding of the zabumba drum, the tapping of the pandeiro, a shallow, tambourine-like instrument and the brisk chiming of the triangle — pushed the ever-surging music forward.

Gil owned the front of the stage, singing so potently in Portuguese that the emotion and timbre of his voice shattered any linguistic barriers. The spirited lusophones, it must be said though, were in fine form when they joined in on several numbers, chanting along to Assim, Sim‘s catchy refrain “Voce vai me comer, vai me saboriar” – “You’re going to eat me, you’re going to savour me.”

The veteran musician, who also recently served as Brazil’s Minister of Culture, was as fine a cultural ambassador as his homeland could ask for, winning over listeners in the church with genuine exhortations to sing, clap and stomp along. At the Ottawa Jazz Festival concert, the former politician also might as well have been the Minister of Fancy Footwork, so frequently did he shimmy and dance across the stage to the delight of the crowd.

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REVIEW: Gilberto Gil gets Graceful (and goofy)

IMN

November 19th, 2012

from NOW

Gilberto Gil gets graceful (and goofy)
The Brazilian music giant’s concert pulls double duty as musical history lesson
By Carla Gillis

Playing in Gilberto Gil’s band has got to be a percussionist’s dream gig. The Brazilian music giant had two in his seven-piece band, and their smiles never faltered as they banged out unbelievably groovy and propulsive polyrhythms on triangles, bongos, snare drums and myriad other bang-able instruments. Add in a bassist, fiddler, accordionist and lead guitarist, and 70-year-old Gil’s delicate and influential guitar work was frequently overpowered.

That said, his voice, stage presence and highly original northeastern Brazilian blend of samba, bossa nova, reggae, Tropicalia and even touches of Celtic more than captivated. It’s music “with a lot of pulse,” explained the former Brazilian minister of culture, who paused now and then to give us Bahia music history lessons, a graceful and well-spoken figure in a casual white t-shirt, jeans and runners.
It was unexpected, then, when halfway through the two-hour set he began to seriously cut loose, dancing goofily across the stage with his guitar. His singing got experimental, calling and responding to guitar leads and giving way to something louder and more primal. At the ends of tunes, his voice dipped impossibly low but also, and even more thrilling, Michael Jackson-high – a tuneful shriek that cut through the sonic busy-ness.

The ladies got on their feet, and then eventually everybody else did, too. We danced and swayed and clapped, knowing that this was the feel-good concert of the year.

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REVIEW: Gilberto Gil at Carnegie Hall

IMN

November 13th, 2012

from The New York Times

Rustic Melodies Survive a Long Trip
Gilberto Gil at Carnegie Hall in Voices of Latin America
By Jon Pareles

A musicology lesson turned into a dance party when Gilberto Gil performed at Carnegie Hall on Thursday night.

Mr. Gil, the great songwriter who was Brazil’s minister of culture from 2003 to 2008, has circled back to music that inspired him to become a musician: forró, the music of Brazil’s hardscrabble rural Northeast. Forró is dance music with its own family of peppy rhythms, most of them driven — like the Cajun music of Louisiana — by an accordion and a very busy triangle. (It is one of worldwide music culture’s deep mysteries why country laborers in hot climates choose fast, strenuous dancing on their few days off.)

Forró’s standard-bearer in Brazil was the singer and accordionist Luiz Gonzaga (1912-89), who made forró a nationwide phenomenon while singing about rural life and romance and acting the bumpkin. Mr. Gil’s set was interspersed with old Gonzaga songs.

But Mr. Gil is no bumpkin. He’s an urban sophisticate and an intellectual, so simply recreating Gonzaga’s rough-and-ready originals was not on the agenda. The band mixed traditional forró instruments — accordion, triangle, zabumba (drum) and rabeca (fiddle) — with bass and two electric guitars (including Mr. Gil’s), and the Gonzaga remakes were thoroughly reimagined: with different chords, new instrumental flourishes, perhaps some wah-wah guitar.

One Gonzaga classic, “Asa Branca” — which, despite its euphoric tune, is about northeastern Brazil’s crippling droughts — featured an unannounced guest: David Byrne, singing in English.

Even with their new twists, the songs maintained their forró energy, which Mr. Gil carried into rusticated versions of his own songs, like “Expresso 2222.” Ever the musical scholar, he named some of the rhythms onstage: xaxado, baião and xote (pronounced SHOAT-eh), a Brazilian rhythm that’s derived from the Scottish-rooted schottische and that still hinted at a jig in the hands of the band’s rabeca player, Nicolas Krassik.

Mr. Gil’s concert was the beginning of Carnegie Hall’s impressive series Voices of Latin America; he is one of its artistic advisers. But the concert had to fight its setting. Carnegie Hall is simply not a good place for percussive dance music, not only because of its seats and formality, but also because its natural reverberation works against rhythmic crispness.

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Gilberto Gil Brings Brazilian Music to Ottowa

IMN

November 12th, 2012

from Ottowa Citizen

Gilberto Gil Brings his Kind of Brazilian Music to Ottowa
By Peter Robb

Brazil is about to step onto the world stage in a very big way.

First it will host the FIFA World Cup in 2014, and then in 2016 Rio de Janeiro will host the first Olympic Games held in South America. It is a fitting climax to years of economic growth and massive democratization led by the former president Luiz “Lula” da Silva.

For Gilberto Gil, the awarding of these massive events has established a new level of global acceptance for Brazilians of all stripes.

“This expansion of Brazil internationally has helped establish a new level of acceptance, international acceptance. Artists profit on that success. I am one of those,” he said. He is hitting 17 different cities, including Ottawa in an upcoming tour of North America.

Gil is one of the great exponents of Brazilian music. The master of many styles, he started his career playing the bossa nova sound that so captivated North American listeners in the 1960s with The Girl from Ipanema by Joao Gilberto and Stan Getz. But he has done so much more than that.

Gil is the man who introduced reggae to Brazil. He has played rock, jazz, samba and the traditional music of his home turf in northeastern Brazil (he was born in the city of Salvador) and the many other regions of his massive homeland.

He says his own musical diversity is a natural occurrence. He picked up influences as he rolled along.

“It is the natural feeling any listener has. There is a specific element that catches you, so you just get close to it. A guitar riff or a drum cell floats into your own thing. Sometimes it’s just the vibe, or the atmosphere, that comes into your music.

“Whatever inspires me, whatever touches me I translate into my own thing.”

He has reached that stage in his career, he said in an interview with the Citizen, when he can undertake large tours of Europe and North America. And so he does. His latest venture outside his country will bring him to Ottawa for the first time as a musician.

Interestingly, Gil has been here before — as the minister of culture for Brazil attending a major conference on cultural diversity in the age of the Internet. He was in government for six years, a job he says he liked: “I’ve been open my whole to different forms of experience, so when I was invited by President Lula, I said let me try it.” And he did, updating the cultural agenda in his homeland and developing a second legacy.

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The Great Gilberto Gil Celebrating Sounds of Brazil

IMN

November 11th, 2012

from AnnArbor.com

The great Gilberto Gil celebrating sounds of Brazil at Hill Auditorium
By Will Stewart

During the 1960s, Gilberto Gil brought Brazilian music beyond Brazil as an integral part of the Tropicalia movement that blended traditional music with psychedelic rock, soul and other elements.
Nearly 50 years and more than 50 albums later, Gil who performs Nov. 16 at Hill Auditorium, remains a giant of Brazilian music, bringing new elements to traditional music to create a singular sound that’s at once global and very specific to his own unique vision.

“I think the legacy of Tropicalia is the concept of diversity and broadness itself,” Gil told the Austin Chronicle this month.

“When Tropicalia took place as a movement, we had been confined to specific areas. We had samba, we had baiao, we had bossa nova, and we had Jovem Guarda, which was the first sort of rock & roll movement in Brazil. What Tropicalia did was say you all belong to Brazil. You all represent Brazilian culture. Get the Beatles, get the Rolling Stones, get Bob Dylan, get Jimi Hendrix—get it all.

“Take elements from all those sources and mix it with Brazilian ones, and that’s what Tropicalia did.”

It also, however briefly, spawned an international craze, with Gil and other artists, like Caetano Veloso and the band Os Mutantes finding success well outside Brazil.

In fact, both Gil and Veloso were jailed briefly, then exiled from their own Brazil during the eary 1970s, when their music was deemed a threat to the country’s military dictatorship.

Gil returned to Brazil in 1973 and during the ensuing four decades, has established himself as an icon of Brazilian music, delving into countless indigenous styles with a creative restlessness that is remarkable as much for its consistently high quality as it is for its diversity.
During his current North American Tour, Gil, now 70, is featuring the music of northeastern Brazil and the late king of baiao, Luiz Gonzaga, whose music captures the dusty, dry inland region of northeastern Brazil known as the Caatinga.

Like nearly every other phase of his artistic pursuit, Gil brings his own inimitable style, even to a celebration of another Brazilian legend. However, he said he’s trying to remain as true to Gonzaga’s legacy as his own artistic vision will allow.

“I’m a lover of that culture. Musically, it’s a whole different thing compared to the rest of Brazilian music,” he said. “I’m one of his disciples, one of his followers and an admirer of his work.”

Given all he’s done to bring both traditional and non-traditional Brazilian music to a wider stage, it should come as no surprise that Gil served several years as Brazil’s minister of culture. Although he left that post four years ago, he still serves as an unofficial ambassador of Brazilian culture to the rest of the world.

It’s a role he continues to take seriously and said his appointment to an official role in government was a reminder that art—and music in particular—can serve as a powerful agent for social change, even in the most repressed societies.

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Brazilian Music Icon Gilberto Gil Comes to the Bay Area

IMN

October 26th, 2012

from Oakland North

Brazilian music icon Gilberto Gil comes to the Bay Area

Bay Area music lovers will have a unique opportunity Thursday to enjoy a new performance by Brazilian pop star Gilberto Gil. The singer and guitarist—formerly Brazil’s Minister of Culture—will perform at the Paramount Theater in downtown Oakland.

“What I’m bringing to America this time is Forró,” said Gil, who had just performed his set at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. “In this concert, we mix a little—it’s mostly Forró, [music] but also some standard, some hits from my whole career, some reggae music, and Bob Marley’s songs.”

Gil’s concert is part of the annual San Francisco Jazz Festival, which brings celebrated international artists to perform in the Bay Area. Over the years SFJAZZ has presented several Brazilian artists, including the famed Milton Nacimento, Daniela Mercury and Caetano Veloso.

“It is important to show what music has inspired jazz and how jazz inspires other music,” said Marshall Lamm, Publicist of SFJAZZ. “Brazilian music is based on improvisation, as is jazz , and the two styles of music have always been connected. Gil is a musical revolutionary, an international pop star and SFJAZZ will always book a former Minister of Culture!”

Gil is touring the United States to promote his new project, the String and Rhythm Machines Concert. The performance celebrates Brazil’s São João festival, a week of wall-to-wall Forró music each June, which marks the end of the rainy season in Brazil as well as the corn harvest.

“After samba, I think [Forró] is the most popular style of music in Brazil,” Gil said. “It’s very rhythmical, very strong, very powerful. So if people in Oakland want to dance, welcome.”

Gil will perform at the Paramount Theater this Thursday at 7:30pm. For more information about the concert, visit sfjazz.org.

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REVIEW: Gilberto Gil at New World Center

IMN

October 26th, 2012

from Miami New Times

Gilberto Gil and Rhythm Foundation’s 25th Season Celebration at New World Center
By Matt Preira

Rhythm Foundation’s 25th Season Celebration
Featuring Gilberto Gil
New World Center, Miami Beach
Sunday, October 21, 2012

Better Than: Tim Robbins’s CD collection in High Fidelity.

Last night, the Rhythm Foundation kicked off its 25th season of international music by hosting an intimate evening with world-renowned Brazilian guitarist Gilberto Gil. And the results were nothing short of spellbinding.

See also:
-Gilberto Gil Celebrates 25 Years of Miami’s Rhythm Foundation at New World Center

Before the concert, guests were treated to complimentary Brazilian cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and the globe-spanning vinyl spinning of DJ Da Lua. Most DJs can’t break out of one or two genres, let alone cover both hemispheres, so it was impressive to hear so many continents in Mr. Da Lua’s mix. And, hey, the drinks were strong and delicious. Conclusion: The Rhythm Foundation knows how to party.

His default cadence was that of the street corner Bossa guitarist on a Sunday afternoon. But the audience was also treated to some expert scatting which sometimes even took on an air of rapping or toasting. And we may have spoken too soon when we dubbed Andrew Bird the “hardest whistling man in show business.” Gil’s puckered lips could emulate everything from violins to songbirds.

On occasion, Gil’s vocals and vocalizations gave way to beat-boxing in the absence of accompanying musicians. But what Gilberto lacked in onstage back-up was more than compensated for by the crowd, who seemed appreciative that the concert was so intimate, but also yearned to dance. The coffeehouse (with stadium seating) style setup didn’t stop people from swaying in their seats, holding up their hands, air-drumming, playing air guitar, and singing with increasing audibility.

A few month’s back, we made much ado regarding flamenco axeman Paco de Lucia and his philosophy of Total Shred. Well, Gil gives the legendary Spanish guitarist gives a run for his money. Because while much of the Brazilian’s repertoire seemingly emanates from a geyser of sensual relaxation and reflection, his hands and their fingers climb up and down the fretboard with a complexity comparable to nuclear physics. Ever the showman, Gilberto finished most numbers with a dramatically triumphant final strum and statuesque follow-through pose, like a pitcher practicing his delivery.

Passion is inherent to the music of Gilberto Gil. In between songs, he spoke in poetically non-native English to the audience about the stories and messages embedded within his music. And almost always the subject at hand was a meditation on Brazilianicity, a broader Latin American consciousness, and the rich potential for cross-cultural exchange through music. The Rhythm Foundation could not have put together a more fitting kickoff for its 25th season.

Critic’s Notebook

The Crowd: Ballers, foreign dignitaries, Rhythm Foundation regulars, and Miamians dressed from head to toe in white.

From the Crowd: Someone shouted “Ecuador!” after Gil omitted the country from a brief list of Latin American nations.

From the Stage: “Love songs come from a cloud. We download them.”

Personal Bias: We typically prefer Os Mutantes to Maria Bethania. Luckily, Gilberto Gil falls perfectly between the two.

Gilberto Gil Setlist:
-“Maquina” -“Eu Vim da Bahia” -“Esotérico” -“Alapala” -“Saudade da Bahia” -“Flora” -“Super Homem” -“Doralice” -“Chiclete” -“Aquele Abraço -“Três Palavras” -“Three Little Birds” -“La Renaissence” -“Domingo No Parque” -“Expresso 2222” Encore -“Soy Loco Por Ti America”

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REVIEW: Gilberto Gil Turns Disney Hall into Brazilian Dance Hall

IMN

October 25th, 2012

from Los Angeles Times

Review: Gilberto Gil turns Disney Hall into Brazilian dance hall
By Reed Johnson

Brazilian singer-composer Gilberto Gil commandingly schools an appreciative crowd at Walt Disney Hall to the exuberant, rough-edged music of the northeast.

From 2003 to ’08 Gilberto Gil served as Brazil’s culture minister, helping underprivileged kids gain access to technology and forging global aesthetic links with a missionary’s zeal.

On Tuesday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Gil was back in that role, paying tribute to mentors such as the great Brazilian singer-composer-accordionist Luiz Gonzaga and quietly schooling his audience in the complex ties between the accordion-based baião music of his native northeast Brazil and geographically (but not sonically) distant relatives like Scottish reels, German polkas and Cajun zydeco.

Not that the crowd needed any instruction in rhythmic appreciation. By the time Gil and his six-man ensemble started to wrap up their two-hour set with Gonzaga’s classic “Asa Branca” (White Wing), a jaunty-melancholy ode to Brazil’s parched, unforgiving sertão region, Frank Gehry’s iconic symphonic enclosure had been transformed into a pop-up forró dance hall.

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Bodies swayed in the balconies, following Gil’s own joyful two-step shuffle as he waved his arms like a Candomblé priest. Brazilian Portuguese resounded. The coffee-colored world ruled, at least momentarily.

But when the numerous Brazilians in the audience began calling out for samba tunes, Gil gently reminded them that the evening’s focus was on the rough-edged, exuberant music of Brazil’s northeast, not the jazzy, urbane samba and bossa nova of cosmopolitan Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

This is what it means to be Gil, now 70, still trim and spry in a white hoodie and jeans. A musical ambassador without portfolio, he roams the planet absorbing sounds and imparting his left-progressive ideas and encyclopedic knowledge to culturally starved nations that think the best way to discover new musical visionaries — sorry, I meant “idols” — is by staging TV show talent contests.

MUSIC REVIEWS: Latest concert and album reviews

Half a lifetime ago, Gil and Caetano Veloso transformed Brazilian popular music by folding African juju and psychedelia, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley and Ravi Shankar into samba and bossa nova. But Gil’s internal compass eventually always points back to the baião music he grew up hearing, along with other hybrid styles such as xote, the Brazilian transliteration of “Scottish” music transported by Celtic migrants into the seaports and hot coastal plains of South America.

At Disney Hall, Gil turned early and often to Gonzaga (1912-89), the Pernambuco native with the wild cowboy attire and blast-furnace voice, forever yearning for his drought-stricken homeland and its salty, peerless females. After setting a party mood with “Fé na Festa,” the title tune from his 2010 album, Gil went straight to Gonzaga’s “A Dança da Moda”; later he covered another Gonzaga essential, “O xote da Meninas.”

Elsewhere in the evening, he gestured toward the Caribbean with covers of “No Woman No Cry” and “Three Little Birds,” so genially relaxed that they could make Bob Marley sound like Joe Strummer.

As a guitar-playing bandleader, Gil happily yields solos to his uniformly excellent sextet: drummer Jorge Gomes, percussionist Gustavo Di Dalva; bassist Arthur Maia; violin player Nicholas Krassik; Sérgio Chiavazzoli, a brilliant slide guitarist and multi-string player who can make a banjo impersonate a sitar; and accordionist Toninho Ferragutti, whose extraordinarily facile keyboard scale-climbing must’ve left his fingers gasping for oxygen.

“Viva Brasil!” someone yelled near the concert’s end, and you could almost hear several hundred voices adding, “Amen.”

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Devendra Joins Gilberto Gil at Hollywood Bowl

IMN

June 6th, 2011

Gilberto Gil has released more than 50 albums in his career — the latest is “Banda Larga Cordel,” which came out this month. That puts him about 45 ahead of Devendra Banhart, but the Brazilian musical icon, 65, and the Los Angeles-based folk-rock eccentric share a passion for eradicating distinctions among musical genres, as they’ll demonstrate when they play at the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday as part of the KCRW World Festival series.

Gil, who also has served as Brazil’s minister of culture since 2003, made a crusade of eclecticism when he spearheaded the Tropicalia movement in the 1960s, and his intoxicating example resonates in the free-spirited approach of Banhart. The 27-year-old son of an American father and a Venezuelan mother might come off as an innocent, but in a conference call with Gil he showed that he’s a serious student of his hero, and of South American music overall.

Devendra, can you tell us how Gilberto has influenced and inspired you?

Banhart: When I think of Gil, it’s so generous, his music. When one person can make music that turns you on to a plethora of genres and cultures, that’s education, man; that’s what opens your mind. It’s one-stop shopping in this weird way too, where you don’t have to go to a bunch of different records. On one record you traverse the globe.

Gil: It’s been like that since childhood. I’ve been always interested in different approaches to music coming from different cultures. It’s been a natural thing. We Brazilians are very diverse from the very beginning. Not just me. Maybe I expose it a little more obviously than other musicians, but it’s natural in Brazil, influences from all over, from European culture, from African culture, from American culture.

Devendra, you spent much of your childhood in Venezuela — what’s the cultural relationship between that country and Brazil?

Banhart: It’s two incredibly different things. In Venezuela we think of Brazil as another world.

Gil: But at the same time, I think all the South American countries relating to the Caribbean area, they’ve been very influential on Brazilian music. The different styles — the cumbia, the mambos, the rumbas, the cha-cha-cha — all those passed from the Caribbean islands and [on to] Venezuela and Ecuador, and even Peru and Colombia. It’s in our musical DNA.

Gilberto Gil in South Africa As Part of a Film on Southern Hemisphere

IMN

May 13th, 2011

From Mail & Guardian

Minister of music mixing the sounds of the south
By: Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon

Gilberto Gil, one of Brazil’s best-known musicians, landed on South African tarmac last week. He is part of a film project called Connecting South, a one-month transnational voyage of the southern hemisphere that has taken him across the stark Australian Outback to inner-city Johannesburg and Soweto and on to the Amazon forests.

“The film explores different aspects of the relations between countries of the southern hemisphere,” Gil says. “The idea of the film is to establish connections with the original people from those countries but then go into social questions — the problems of colonisation, poverty, inequality, unbalanced societies and injustice, but also the power and strength that remain in cultural terms, at least for those people and communities.”

To read more, click here

Gilberto Gil: Message in the music

IMN

May 11th, 2011

From Times Live

Message in the music
By Andrea Nagel

This soulful brother from Brazil has questions he wants his South African audience to grapple with, writes Andrea Nagel

The Big Read: It must have taken an extraordinary moment of clarity to appoint a musician to the office of minister of culture in Brazil in 2003, when President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office.

From a left-wing background and being a founding member of the Workers’ Party in Brazil, Da Silva became known as one of the most popular politicians in the world.

It makes sense for a man loved by his people to give political prominence to a musician who uses his song lyrics to “address social issues, to voice protest of authoritarian control, to make aesthetic statements and to explore philosophical and spiritual themes”, as Charles Perrone states about Gilbert Gil in his book Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Song.

“My generation in Brazil used music to make a political statement against the military regime of the time,” says Gil, who left government in 2008. Brazil was governed by an authoritarian military government from 1964 to 1985.

To read more click here

The Guardian Profiles Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso

IMN

July 15th, 2010

from The Guardian

Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso in London
By John Lewis

It’s August 1970 and there are 600,000 people in a field in the Isle of Wight watching the biggest music festival that has ever been held. They will, over the course of the five-day event, witness performances from the Who, the Doors, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, and the last show by Jimi Hendrix. But headlining the second day are two anonymous Brazilians, joined by a troupe of naked dancers draped in red plastic. The pair start chanting in Portuguese, accompanied by African drums and jazz flute. Then they plug in their guitars and play a crazed set mixing psychedelic rock, funk and samba.

The two men are Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso. It will be some time before they are filling arenas around the world or, in Gil’s case, serving as a minister in the Brazilian government. In the summer of 1970 they are merely exotic fixtures on London’s underground scene, jamming with Hawkwind and hanging out in art galleries, hippy communes and music festivals.

“I was astonished to discover how big these guys were,” says Nik Turner from Hawkwind. “They seemed so humble, so generous, so eager to jam with anyone.”

Only two years earlier, Veloso and Gil had been two of Brazil’s biggest pop stars, leading lights in the slyly subversive Brazilian psychedelic rock scene Tropicália. That was until the military dictatorship decided they were a threat. In December 1968 they were arrested in São Paulo. They had their heads shaved, spent two months in prison and a further four months under house arrest.

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REVIEW Gilberto Gil Takes Audience Around the Musical World

IMN

April 6th, 2010

By Ron Hubbard
From the Pioneer Press

It’s no surprise that Gilberto Gil has become a successful diplomat. Arguably Brazil’s most famous musical export, Gil has also been his home country’s minister of culture and an international emissary for the United Nations. But, on Saturday night, he demonstrated to an enthusiastic audience at Minneapolis’ Orchestra Hall that he also knows how to negotiate successful partnerships between very disparate musical styles.

While the samba has been the heartbeat within Gil’s music throughout his 50-year career, he’s always been a restless experimenter, finding that forms from Africa, North America, Europe and elsewhere are often a fine fit for his original songs. Yet, he can make it all sound like a seamlessly smooth intercultural concoction. And he and two acoustic collaborators made Saturday’s concert feel like a very special experience, one of those that most in attendance will likely look back upon as a landmark concert.

Over the course of two hours and 23 songs, Gil spun soundscapes with his guitarist son, Bem Gil, and cellist Jaques Morelenbaum, some as breezy as a beach in Rio de Janeiro, others as dark and discomfiting as a walk through a rough part of Sao Paolo. But each song felt like an engrossing short story, even if you didn’t speak a word of Portuguese. Gil’s musical evocation of moods and emotions made that old saw about the universal language rarely seem so deeply truthful.

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REVIEW: Gilberto Gil at Royce Hall

IMN

March 22nd, 2010

Source: Los Angeles Times
Contributing Writer: Mikael Wood

Twelve guitar strings, four cello strings and two vocal cords — those were the components of what Gilberto Gil described with mathematical precision as the “very simple concert” he performed Saturday night at UCLA’s Royce Hall, where the Brazilian singer-guitarist was accompanied by cellist Jaques Morelenbaum and Gil’s son Bem on guitar.

And aside from the tambourine Bem picked up near the end of the two-hour show, Gil’s accounting proved essentially accurate: This was a determinedly uncluttered presentation of material from throughout Gil’s 40-year career, from early songs about cultural upheaval to a pair of new tunes (one written for his daughter Maria’s recent wedding) depicting his role as proud paterfamilias.

Still, Gil’s list of ingredients left out one key element of the show sound: enthusiastic participation of his audience, which contributed vocals and handclaps both at Gil’s invitation (as in “Babá Alapalá,” for which he led a robust call-and-response sequence) and of its own accord (as in “Andar com Fé,” which took on the rousing feel of a national anthem).

Casually attired in crisp designer jeans and an untucked dress shirt open at the collar, Gil, 67, sang and played Saturday with the relaxed confidence of a lifelong star. (After spending five years as Brazil’s minister of culture, Gil returned to music full time in 2008.)

During “Flora,” an ode to his wife, he plucked his guitar gently while exhaling a series of melodic turns that were as lovely as they were unexpected. Later, he dropped a bit of the Beatles’ “Penny Lane” into “Metáfora,” illuminating his music’s understated man-of-the-world sophistication; another nod toward the Beatles surfaced in an “Eleanor Rigby”-ish reading of “Panis et Circences.”

Yet Gil also demonstrated plenty of the arty intransigence that’s made him a hero to such young indie rockers as Devendra Banhart, with whom Gil shared a bill at the Hollywood Bowl two years ago.

In “Não Tenho Medo da Morte,” he tapped his guitar like a drum and delivered his vocal in a low, steady growl; the sound approximated a kind of acoustic rap.

“Um Banda Um” rode a choppy funk groove, with guitar riffs from Gil and his son. For “Nightingale” — which Gil introduced as “an L.A. song” because he’d recorded it here with Sergio Mendes in the late ’70s — the musicians rocked the hardest they did all night, as Gil sang a charmingly childlike lyric in English that Banhart might have been happy to claim as his own: “Water, love and seeds / Those were all his needs.”

At Royce Hall, Gil’s needs were similarly minimal. What he created from them, though, couldn’t so easily be contained.

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