As he returns to London, the city he was exiled in, Brazil’s greatest living musician – and one-time culture minister – is still full of political fire. He explains his anger, undimmed creativity, and grief for Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira
The Brazilian music legend Gilberto Gil has recorded more than 50 albums, spanning samba, rock, funk, bossa nova, reggae, forró and disco, plus the liberated sound of tropicália, the movement he helped to create in the 60s. There may be musicians who can boast similar diversity and success – but there are none who have performed at the United Nations with the secretary general joining in on percussion.
At the end of the 1980s, Gil, who was born in 1942, let his political as well as his musical side flourish and became a city councillor in Salvador. He reached higher office in 2003, when a dreadlocked Gil accepted the role of minister of culture for the then-president, Luíz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. That year, he performed his 1979 hit Toda Menina Baiana (Every Girl from Bahia) on the UN stage in New York, accompanied by Kofi Annan. He remained in the position until 2008, a term the writer and composer Luiz Antônio Simas says is “remarkable, because it showed that culture takes place in an everyday dimension: on the corner, in the bar, at the square. It was a policy so advanced it should have become a model.”
