Documents from Gilberto Gil's Private Archive

GILBERTO GIL: Yeah. We have changed that, you know, even with the United States engaged themselves into a sort of more democratic policymaking process, you know, supporting democracies in Latin America and everything and everything. And we are responding. The democracies are raising, you know, are coming, in new forms and with elections and the renewal of the individuals in power and everything. The parliaments are in good shape, working OK. I think it's better, Latin America. And we are growing economically, entering a new cycle of goals. AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Gilberto Gil, how has your position as revolutionary musician, imprisoned, then exiled, to government official, Minister of Culture in Brazil, changed your view of social change, how it happens? GILBERTO GIL: Yeah, not just that the tides of life have brought me to a different shore, so to speak-I mean, I was-not just that, but also because of aging and maturity. I mean, maturing is a process that comes- at least it has been that way for me-it comes with a sort of broader sense of perspective, in terms of the dialogue between the forces, between the opposite forces that we have in nature and that we have in human life. So, to me, it's like natural that I was responding for one thing then, and I am responding for another thing then, because they have to dialogue. I mean, the revolutionary attitude that informs art, that informs culture, that has to be balanced by the cautious position that governments and then the states have to have. And I can see the balanced approach that we can have, you know, for both things. I can see that today. I can see the contributions that the revolutionary attitude can give and the contributions that the cautious sort of procedural, day-by-day kind of life also can give AMY GOODMAN: Has your vegetarianism, your macrobiotic yoga, has it also changed your view? And why did you go that way? GILBERTO GIL: I think so. I think so. By letting me be conscious about the needs of balance, you know, and the needs of respect with nature. And the first part of nature that we should respect is our own body, you know? We are part of nature. We need balance, you know? We need right balance between the liquid and the solid parts of ourselves. And, you know, that sort of thing. I mean, like writing well, you know, it's an educational thing that we have to do. We can't go on with societies that are being-suffering from obesity and from coronary diseases and from diabetes, and so and so and so, because of the wrong use, of the lack of balance, you know, for nourishment, for the nourishing processes that we have to be engaged with. So I think that onsideration of balance as a thing has given me the opportunity to really grow into maturity, the way I was saying before, you know, able to see life with broad perspective. AMY GOODMAN: And at your concert tonight, the message you want to convey to Americans, what you want them to take away? GILBERTO GIL: The name of the concert is "Broadband," in that sense not only the technological sense, but the spiritual sense. The band broadly playing fusions and sharings of different cultures, different sounds, different moods, different processes of civilizing, you know, different civilizing processes. You know, respect, mutual respect. I think that's the central message.