Documents from Gilberto Gil's Private Archive

Gil, as a lyricist, has the tendency to move in to a weird but often successful kind of philosophical pop, where lyrics become discussions or at times manifestos of Gil's beliefs about poetry, science, herbal remedies, the internet, myth and truth. Metafora' was one of these, and while the lyrics are a little leaden even in portuguese, Gil's extraordinary soulfulness, and lyrical delivery saves everything. More of the material was of the other kinds that Gil is the master of: hook- laden samba based tunes, like his interpretation of Adriana Calconhotto's Marina Morena". Or his Tropicalismo hit, "Maracatu Atómico'. 'Samba de Los Angeles', he explained, was about time spent in Los Angeles. My portuguese wasn't good enough to catch when specifically, but the song was on his breakout album "Nightingale' that brought him to a broader North American audience - one that seems to evade him a little here in Toronto. Palco, was another early hit he played; along with Tempo Rei (King Time), Superhomem - A Cançao (Superman - the Song). The close out, at the end of a long and satisfying encore, was “Toda Menina Baiana", another masterpiece of Gil's, and delivered in a driving, convincing way that, in a place other than the Massey Hall, would have had everyone up and dancing. While much of the material was older, Gil seems neither stuck in the past, nor dismissive of it. This was no nostalgia tour, but it did have the fascinating aspect of watching this master player reinterpret material from four decades, in the bossa style that he first mastered, that he later helped turn on its head during Tropicalismo. This isn't surprising: in his autobiography, Tropical Truth, Caetano Veloso emphasizes the love and admiration that he and the other Tropicalistas had for Joao Gilberto, the ultimate bossa musician. Joao in his own turn, was a master of the earlier Samba Cançao style of samba before radicalizing it with his infinitely flexible Bossa Nova. Gil also found his way into styles like Reconcavo, a more african sound that originates in Bahia, as well as sounding at times like his peer in Brazil, Jorge Ben, another guitar virtuoso. Music in Brazil tends to continually redigest and reexamine the past in terms of its present. Rhythms - samba, maracatu, forró, afoxé and many others - endure. Old songs return; the latest pop artists forever return to octogenarian sambistas to learn and enrich each other. Gil is the latest of these, returning to himself, and the products of an astounding career. Despite this, he remains a little less well known here than he might be. Following his Maracatu Atómico', Gil played "Outros Viram": literally Others Came'. In it a parade of past visitors to Brazil is named, from Teddy Roosevelt to Mayakovsky, each reported to admire various aspects of Brazil. This is another of Gil's philosophical songs, but the one where it didn't seem quite right: the only wrong note that he didn't quite recover from. Something in the song tells more than he might think about the anxiety that Brazilians feel in the world; largely ignored by the North American/European culture they are so acutely aware of, hungry for outside