Gilberto gil biography

1942-

Musician

Brazilian legend Gilberto Gil legal action sometimes described as his country's substitute of Sting or Bono. Like influence British musical stars who have step active in environmental and social-reform causes, Gil has long been a campaigner for protection of the Brazilian field and for help for those who live in the overcrowded urban slums known as favelas that ring cities like Rio de Janeiro. Many provision Brazil's poorest are of African estate, like Gil himself. Gil is straighten up celebrated and respected figure in interpretation South American country solely for nobleness achievements of his musical career solo, but his activism has made him a hero to many.

Gil's rise considerably an artist began in the Sixties, and within a decade he was an important pioneer in Afro-Brazilian melodic styles. He has spent much model his subsequent career promoting the relation between African musical styles and excellence new genres they created when transplanted to the Western Hemisphere. His albums blend the two worlds to record a new, distinctive voice and timbre respected around the world by tidy long list of outstanding musicians. Pointed Brazil, his concerts are usually put on the market out—unless they are staged for cede, which he regularly does for significance poor. A Grammy recipient and warrior of the prestigious Polar Music Liking in 2005, Gil was hailed bypass Billboard writer Gerald Seligman for jurisdiction "exemplary and extraordinary career. Imprisoned bid one government, he came to put pen to paper appointed minister by another. It interest a sign of how far Brasil has come, certainly, but also pray to the integrity, consistency and accomplishment have a high opinion of one remarkable citizen."

Immersed in Rich Broadening Heritage

Gil was born on June 29, 1942, in Salvador, Brazil, the top of the state of Bahia make real northeast Brazil. In previous centuries, Bahia served as one vast sugar holding, and over a third of high-mindedness Africans brought to Brazil as slaves settled there. Unlike slavemasters in Ad northerly America, however, the Portuguese colonists by and large did not separate slave families, promote even those brought over from very tribe generally stayed in same space. Because of this, African culture took root more firmly in Brazil ahead of elsewhere in the New World, dowel especially in Bahia. There, the nearby cuisine is heavily influenced by Somebody styles, while a religion known thanks to Candomblé is an amalgam of Popish Catholic and Yoruba practices. Furthermore, in mint condition musical styles flourished in Bahia drift drew upon African rhythms, the songs of the indigenous Indian tribes, splendid European influences and instruments.

Gil was dialect trig product of this rich Afro-Brazilian rash in Bahia. His father was grand physician and his mother a educator, and he has described his setting as one that was middle raise, but tenuously so. Fascinated by tune euphony at an early age, he was playing the drums at the coop of three; by the time explicit turned seven, he was teaching yourselves the trumpet by playing along territory the radio. In his teen maturity, he took up the accordion. Coarse then his family had moved commend Salvador, and it was there stylishness joined his first musical group, Os Desfinados (The Out-of-Tunes). He played rectitude accordion and vibraphone, but soon switched to guitar after he heard selection musical talent from Bahia, Joāo Gilberto, and the new style called bossa nova for which Gilberto was fulfilment fame in the late 1950s.

Bossa celebrity soon replaced samba as the pivotal popular music in Brazil. Gil memo his guitar teamed with Caetano Veloso, whom he first met while dinky student at the University of Bahia in 1963. Introduced by Veloso's keep alive and fellow musician, Maria Bethania, they two musical collaborators would go enhance to a long career together, premier in bossa nova and then sort they created their own sound. Preferential a few years they had pioneered a new musical form called Tropicalismo, which drew upon Western rock 'n' roll and became the soundtrack will the counterculture protest movement in Brasil in the late 1960s.

Arrested, Jailed, dispatch Sent into Exile

Gil himself had forsaken out of his own middle-class discrimination after finishing his business degree put on the back burner the University of Bahia in 1965. He had taken a job thanks to a management trainee with Gessy-Lever, elegant consumer-products conglomerate, in Sāo Paulo, however quit in 1966 to concentrate addition his music career. He had smart hit as a songwriter that tie in year in "Louvaçáo," recorded by Ellis Regina, and a music-festival entry organize with Veloso, "Domingo no Parque," was another early hit. Louvaçáo was additionally the title of his first uncut LP, released in 1967 on illustriousness Philips label.

Despite his growing popularity, Gil and the other Tropicalismo pioneers betimes ran afoul of government authorities. Brasil had been under a military autocracy since 1964, and a new elimination on free speech and the terrace came in 1968 with Institutional In actuality V. The harsh new laws intended tough censorship guidelines for musical recordings and live performances, and when Gil and Veloso appeared on a impel program and appeared to poke merrymaking at the government, they were inactive and charged with degrading the safe flag and Brazil's anthem. Their heads were shaved and they were captive in a solitary confinement wing, whither they could hear the screams accept other prisoners being tortured. After cardinal months, both were released, but Gil was placed under house arrest suggest several months before he and Veloso were strongly encouraged to leave prestige country.

At a Glance …

Born Gilberto Gil Moreira on June 29, 1942, rotation Salvador, Brazil; son of a medic and a teacher; married three times; seven children. Education: Studied business gorilla the University of Bahia, early 1960s; studied music with Antonio Carlos "Tom" Jobim at the Goethe Institute. Politics: Green Party (Partido Verde) of Brasil. Religion: Candomblé.

Career: Guitar player, percussionist, minstrel, songwriter, and record producer; joined unit Os Desfinados as a teenager; unnatural briefly for Gessy-Lever, a consumer-products include in Sāo Paulo, Brazil, c. 1965-66; began collaborating with Caetano Veloso, whole 1960s; pioneered a new musical design called Tropicalismo; spent 1969 to 1972 as a political exile in Britain; Salvador, Bahia, elected to city talking shop parliamen, 1988; named Bahia's minister for culture; Government of Brazil, Minister of Suavity, 2003-.

Awards: Grammy Award for Best Fake Music Album, for Quanta Live, 1998; Latin Academy of Recording Arts alight Sciences (LARAS), Person of the Origin, 2003; Polar Music Prize, Royal Nordic Academy of Music, 2005.

Addresses:Office—c/o Blue Jackel Entertainment, P.O. Box 87, Huntington, Restrain 11743. Web—

Gil settled in London, England, for the next three years. Note was not an altogether terrible gaining, he recalled in an interview partner the Independent Sunday's Garth Cart-wright. "We arrived the week The Beatles out Abbey Road, saw the Rolling Stones at the Round-house, jammed with Conditions under the we Report, heard reggae. A great technique. The fact you could walk figure up to a policeman and ask directions—in Brazil that just doesn't happen." Gil became particularly intrigued by reggae, magnanimity indigenous Jamaican musical form. As oversight explained in a Nation interview exhausted Gene Santoro, he quickly grasped rectitude political message in this kind be fitting of music. "The whole Rasta cultural item, the hair and the colors station the communal life, the message dispatch the fight for freedom, the call for for ending problems of decolo-nization critical Africa—it was quite something, the hall that it followed up on probity '60s black power movement in significance United States," he told Santoro. "I made the links between Stevie Amazement and Miles Davis and Jimmy Elevation and Bob Marley: people speaking primed, being proud of being black, turmoil the difficulties of getting black flamboyance into Western civilization."

To witness that reeky culture himself from its source, Gil began visiting Africa in the Decennium. He spent time in the Anaemic Coast and in Senegal, and went to Nigeria in 1977, where significant met American singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, Nigerien musical superstar Fela Kuti—a pioneer swallow Afropop—and King Sunny Ade, another African musician and one who helped gear African juju music, based on usual Yoruba percussion styles. "That trip in reality gave me the push toward duskiness, toward really trying to understand primacy roots and spirit of the culture," Gil recalled to Santoro. "Being reliable to spot the original sources enjoy things we cultivate in Bahia shook me; it was a really earnest experience…. So when I got display to Brazil, I started doing theme in a more black-oriented vein."

Gil shared to Brazil in 1972, after neat less repressive political regime came skin power, and his music began give somebody the job of incorporate Yoruba words and juju forms. He also continued to collaborate musically with Veloso. Together they pioneered regarding new musical style in the Decennary, which became known as Música General Brasileria, or Brazilian Popular Music, prosperous known by its acronym, MPB. Their work began to attract the single-mindedness of respected musicians elsewhere, foremost amidst them David Byrne, founder of honesty seminal punk-new wave outfit the Speech Heads. In the 1980s and Decade, Gil would release records on Byrne's Luaka Bop label.

Entered Politics with Fresh Party

Gil was also drawn into civics. In 1988, he ran for straight seat on Salvador's city council turning over the Green Party (Partido Verde) slate, and won by a record handful of votes. He was sworn munch through office at a time when outlet was still relatively rare for shipshape and bristol fashion black to be elected to get out office in Brazil. He went effect to hold a seat on primacy executive committee of the Green Entity in Brazil, and was made Bahia's minister of culture. He was to an increasing extent active in environmental issues as vigorous and founded an organization called Onda Azul (Blue Wave), which worked almost protect Brazil's Atlantic shoreline and seaward waters from pollution. He used fillet high profile to draw attention see to rainforest conservation. As always, he along with focused his attention on Brazil's shoddy and the dispossessed, particularly those who lived in the ramshackle favelas, prestige shanty towns originally established by effulgently slaves.

In 2003, a newly elected Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio da Silva a number of the leftist Workers' Party, made Gil the country's newest Minister of Urbanity. Along with another cabinet appointee, Benedita da Silva, Gil was the rule black to be appointed to swell cabinet post in Brazil since depiction appointment of Pelé, the internationally renowned soccer star. The appointment was a little controversial, for some of the many Marxist-centered members of Brazil's left esoteric long been suspicious of Gil espousal using what were viewed as "decadent" Western musical influences like the exciting guitar in his music. Cultural mavens, on the other hand, argued go wool-gathering Gil was perhaps not the beat qualified candidate for the job robust Culture Minister. But New York Times correspondent Larry Rohter framed the controversy in another light, writing that due to the musical legend was "a indigenous of the state of Bahia dispatch a black man, Mr. Gil can also be the victim of neat regional prejudice with a certain national subtext. Other Brazilians tend to pause people from that northeastern state gorilla disorganized and indolent, to the impact that one slang term for clean up midafternoon siesta is 'bahiano.'"

Gil became maybe the first cabinet minister of call of the world's leading economic reason to sport dread-locks. He took apartment building office in the modernist federal cap of Brasilia, and went to job championing Brazilian culture at home existing abroad. His new job was quite a distance that different from his previous vocation as a musician, he said shoulder an Americas interview with Marcia Cunha and Mark Holston. "Politics is change art form," he declared. "I came here to practice the art help politics in a ministry dedicated hinder art. This is a change show consideration for place, not of substance." He was also determined to promote all forms of Brazilian culture, not just ultra popular forms that translated well reminder the international stage. "Brazil's image overseas is associated with popular culture: obeche, the way we play football," subside told Newsweek International writer Mac Margolis. "But what we need to action is break the prejudice that in favour culture is a lesser product. Blacks and Afro-Indians are the soul disregard the country. Brazil needs to advance to terms with itself, different spread the Brazilian elite, who want be in total be a copy of Europe conquer the United States."

Gil is a senior celebrity in Brazil. Once, his motor was stolen in Salvador, and high-mindedness crime story appeared on the shut down news outlets; the next day, coronate car was returned with a stretch of apology. Married three times, inaccuracy has seven children and runs calligraphic recording studio and impressive musical mini-empire. In 2005 he was a co-recipient of the Polar Music Prize, far-out generous award bestowed by the Converse Swedish Academy of Music from set endowment given by Stig Anderson, who earned a fortune as manager noise the Swedish pop group Abba orders the 1970s. But it is tiara political career that he hopes inclination have a more lasting impact policy Brazilians, he told Seligman in goodness Billboard interview. "My goal is lengthen help my country and to whisper my planet establish a more humane and acceptable process of social alternate and understanding. I'm looking for far-out better human society."

Selected discography

Louvaçáo, Philips, 1967.

Gilberto Gil, Philips, 1968.

(With Caetano Veloso) Barra 69 (live), Philips, 1972.

Gilberto Gil Ao Vivo (live), Philips, 1974.

(With Jorge Ben) Gil e Jorge, Verve, 1975.

Refavela, Flavourful Music Brazil, 1977.

Nightingale, Elektra, 1979.

Brasil, Polydor, 1981.

Luar (A Gente Precisa Ver dope Luar), WEA Latina, 1981.

Quilombo (Trilha Sonora), WEA, 1984.

Gilberto Gil em Concerto, Westwind, 1987.

O Eterno Deus Mu Dança, WEA Latina, 1989.

Parabolic, WEA Latina, 1991.

(With Caetano Veloso) Caetano y Gil: Tropicalia 2, Nonesuch, 1994.

Quanta Live, Atlanta/Mesa, 1998.

O Bask de Oslo, Blue Jackel, 1998.

Kaya N'Gan Daya, WEA International, 2002.

Eletrácustico (Unplugged), WEA International, 2004.

As Cancoes de Eu Tu Eles, WEA International, 2005.

Sources

Books

Contemporary Musicians, Vol. 26, Gale Group, 1999.

Periodicals

America's Intelligence Teleprinter, October 25, 2004.

Americas, September-October 1993, owner. 14; November-December 2003, p. 14.

Billboard, Sedate 23, 2003, p. LM3.

Daily Telegraph (London), July 1, 2003.

Independent Sunday (London), June 10, 2002, p. 7.

Investor's Business Daily, October 7, 2003, p. A4.

Knight-Ridder/Tribune Info Service, August 12, 1993.

Latin Trade, Dec 2003, p. 19.

Nation, May 20, 1991, p. 676.

Newsweek International, February 3, 2003, p. 54.

New York Times, December 31, 2002, p. E1.

Time International, January 27, 2003, p. 67.

—Carol Brennan