Documents from Gilberto Gil's Private Archive

Minister of sound Brazil's Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil, has a CV that new, live album, Eletracustico, recorded in Rio includes a spell in jail and an expansive pop career. As he prepares to play London, Gil tells Sue Steward why his politics and his music are in perfect harmony last year to a home crowd during a break from duties. It sits with a slower, polemical version of Lennon's 'Imagine', and a hauntingly beautiful samba-reggae take on Marley's Three Little Birds', which he sang at his inauguration. One of the crucial issues in Brazil today is the crime and poverty that plagues the 'favelas' or ghettoes. Gil's reggae influences have earned him respect among favelas' heavily black communities, and he sees his goal as being To help build on the potential of those with no access to the arts, the excluded people. His funds have recently been quadrupled by a loan from the Inter-American bank, and he beams as he says: 'Now I can subsidise the hundreds of new record labels in the independent music sector - a staggering 30 per cent of the market.' This figure reflects a flourishing local scene where home-made electronic music has become the music of deprived youth. 'We are planning to link the favelas to each other, to the Ministry, and to contacts abroad, and to provide equipment, internet links and funds,' he enthuses. Connecting them together will eventually bring them out of ghetto. Young rappers, including MV BILL and Marcelo D2, who recently rocked London's Marquee club, are being co-opted. As Brazilians are increasingly visible in the electronic dance music explosion - appearing here on TV ads and dropped into films - the ex-Rio favela kid, Seu Jorge, graduated from rapping in City of God to singing electro-samba versions of Bowie hits in Wes Anderson's recent film The Life Aquatic. Two years on, does Gil still like the job? 'I'm very happy with it,' he purrs. "People see me as somebody who has already made it, part of the system, but also someone who challenges the establishment,' he says. "The Tropicalia scene was split in that same way - it's the paradox of success.' Gilberto Gil, Mon 11 Jul, London Coliseum, St Martin's Lane, Trafalgar Square, WC2 (020-7632 8300). Eletracustico (Warner Brothers) is available now. n January 2003, Brazil's new President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, made the extraordinary move of appointing a pop star as Minister of Culture. Not just any old pop star, though. Gilberto Gil is a Brazilian legend whose record sales run into millions. He has a French knighthood for arts, and cabinets full of Grammys, including the 2003 Man Of The Year award given after his inauguration as Minister. Now 63, he has a youthful, yoga-toned physique, short, springy dreadlocks and a beatific smile. The breaking of protocol is the style of the new government,' he joked back then. Although he wore a white tunic and trousers to the inauguration, two years on, elegant black suits are his uniform. It's not just his pop career that makes Gil an unusual choice for Minister. He also has a prison record. In 1969 he was jailed for two months with his musical partner, Caetano Veloso, by Brazil's ruling military dictatorship. They feared our bad influence on the youth,' Gil explains, referring to their psychedelic songs and wild hippy outfits. They said, "OK, jail or exile," and we chose jail. When they came out, they fled the country on the proceeds of a benefit concert, spending the next two years in London. Unlike fellow pop philanthropists such as Bob Geldof and Bono, Gil now operates from inside the heart of the establishment, a lifestyle that comes at a price. He lives apart from his third wife, Flora, and their two small children, who are in in Rio, taking only Maria, his twentysomething daughter by his second wife, to live and work with him in the nation's political capital, Brasilia. He goes home at weekends. His days are spent in his office, meeting ambassadors, foreign ministers, Brazilian mayors and musicians with begging bowls, but he is also President Lula's favourite travelling companion - an articulate, cultured Gil left his first job, in an office, grew an Afro, asset who speaks several languages. A charming, wore kaftans and concentrated on music. He good-looking, dreadlocked Minister who plays moved to Sao Paulo and landed a weekly TV guitar is an irresistible publicity draw. show. After the enforced spell in London, Gil I've gone from being the stone thrower to the discovered Bob Marley and introduced reggae glass,' he adds, in typical abstract language. to Brazil. The first ripples of Gil's music reached That's the way life is, moving from one state to Britain in the early Eighties, with the gorgeous, another. I've swapped clubs and stadiums for light reggae song, "A Toda Menina Baiana' (To offices and palaces.' He combines his political All The Bahian Women). It is reworked on his and musical lives in a unique way. In meetings he pronounces dramatically, like a gospel preacher. His official appearances often involve music - at the first Anglo-Brazilian Literary Festival, in 2003, he ditched his prepared speech and danced a samba. He is surely the only Minister who travels with a guitar case and a pocketful of songs at the ready. At a UN conference last year, he persuaded Kofi Annan to play congas, while he sang a couple of Bob Marley songs. Next week, on Bastille Day, President Lula will join President Chirac for Gil's Paris concert with an acoustic quartet. The changes in Gilberto Gil's life have been remarkable. My late father was descended from slaves,' he says flatly, 'My mother's side is indigenous, Indian.' His father was a doctor, and the family, based in Bahia, in North-East Brazil, were relatively wealthy and highly cultured. His musical career began at the age of 10. I asked parents for an accordion, and played local folk music.' Then he taught himself guitar and started to write songs. In the Fifties, bossa nova 'really turned me upside down, with its amazing words and weird beat'. At Salvador University he met Veloso, and heard Beatles records for the first time. We thought, we've got to shake this scene with some rock'n'roll.' CHRISTOPHER PILLITZ/NETWORK Gilberto Gil in Brazil, May 2004