Documents from Gilberto Gil's Private Archive

MINISTER OF (COUNTER) CULTURE Once-radical concepts now 'talk of the town' "GIL, FROM 7G nounced and some of the greatest music in the world has been made. He says he was a reflective and introverted youth, which made his transi- tion into generational spokes- man and agent provocateur difficult. "One of the things that really bothered me was the sense of bothering others," he says. "This really is uncom- fortable for me, even if it's true, if I'm right, even if I'm doing good. I was born to be agreeable, to please." Gil and his friends and col- laborators, including Caetano Veloso, Os Mutantes, and Jorge Ben, were making a scene in Sao Paulo. When they started playing psychedelic pop on a national TV show, they outraged the left as well as the right. It was the South American equivalent of Bob Dylan playing electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival. Except Dylan never was jailed, interrogated, and thrown out of the country. Tropicalia has become a widely romanticized move- ment, embraced worldwide by hipsters and intellectuals. It was the subject of a London artexhibit last year that then moved to Berlin, New York and Chicago. But for Gil, it was a painful, confusing time, marked by tumult, self-doubt, and brutal punishment. "It was agony," he says. In jail, Gil turned to medita- tion. He recalls thinking, "Now I'm here, what do I do with my life? What do I do with my time? What do I do with my boredom? What do I do with being lost in this dirty spot? And you have to look for the light, in physical and spiritual and substantial terms. Where is the light substance, how can I grasp it?" The study of Eastern philos- ophies he began then has shaped his music since. It was the focus of a '99 book on Gil by artist Bené Fonteles that was accompanied by a CD. That CD, Gil Luminoso, was recently released commer- cially. Gil sings 15 songs from his past accompanied only by himself on guitar. It's a spare, DETTE SUSIE J. HORGAN/FOR THE MIAMI HERALD PHILOSOPHY, THEN ACTION: Gilberto Gil is a big-picture kind of guy IF YOU GO What: Concert by Brazilian singer-songwriter Gilberto Gil When: 8 tonight Where: Carnival Center for the Performing Arts, Knight Concert Hall, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami How much: $15-$75 Info: 305-949-6722 786-468-2326 or www.carnivalcenter.org beautiful, reflective album full of poetic musings, such as on 75's Retiros Espirituais (Spiri- tual Retreats): "How having problems can be the same as resolving not to have them/ Resolve to have them is to resolve to have to ignore them." Gil has brought his experi- ences as a creator of culture to bear on his post as a policy- maker. He's used his unique position to become a world leader on the issue of intellec- tual property rights, a point of friction between developed and developing nations. He advocates a flexible approach to copyright in which some works of art may be univer- sally owned, while others are still individually controlled. Gil has offered a handful of his songs up to anyone who wants them. At SXSW, Gil said it's a philosophy that dates back to Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that the intellectual domain is the least adjustable to the con- cept of property. Gil is a big-picture kind of guy. He's a wide-ranging, well- read thinker who turns discus- sions into philosophical points, albeit sometimes with the elliptical vagaries of a Leary- quoter (compounded by the strange translations of a Latin language into a Germanic one). "It's very important that philosophy inform action. Despite the pragmatic demands of life, it's this philo- sophical mapping that really gives you the possibility of being sufficiently humble to accept life and difference and the other, the non-you. I've been dedicating my life to this kind of research." In jail, Gil learned to accept that, as the Vedic scriptures put it, "all life is suffering." That gave him a serenity that he now calls the soft power," and a psychologist might call passive aggression. If he has learned to have grace in the face of that he cannot change, beneath lies a well of courage to change what he can. "This is the challenge of the future, how to create a new form of totalizing. The visit of President Bush to Lula is one of those things. It's more than the summing of each side's interests. The outsiders are gaining from their gain." It's strange to see an icon of antiestablishmentarianism cel- ebrating the visit of an unpop- ular American president. Gil has his critics, including old friends who think he's sold out. But he sees his new role as a triumph and a vindication of his old views. "Are you still a hippie?" someone asked him at the end of the SXSW press conference. "Definitely," Gil smiled. "Now it's not just preaching in the desert, as it was then," the minister of culture - or is that counterculture? - told The Miami Herald later, at the hotel. "Now it's politicizing, it's the citizen saying it, not me. It's street talk, not the pri- vate agony of a crazy boy at home. Now it's easy." Car Trouble? Your new ride is waiting for you in SPECIAL SNEAK TOMORROW NIGHT PREVIEW "SMART SHARP AND WITTY ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING Richard Gere has never been better. Alfred Molina is terrific. A delicious movie treat" EH MAXIM The HOAX Miami-Dade: 305-350-2222 Broward: 954-524-2535 The Miami Herald Miamilleralt.com/classifieds RICHARD GERE A TERRIFIC RIDE with one of the most audacious mind-blowing characters you'll ever meet B, GAVSETT SENS "RIVETING! ONE OF THE MOST FASCINATING STORIES OF ALL TIME. A classic American tale of fame, scandal and a country that ate it up NEVER LET THE TRUTH GET IN THE WAY OF A GOOD STORY AVENTURA 24 305-466-0456 7:30pm THE UNBELIEVABLY TRUE STORY Special Sneak Preview Tomorrow Night SUNSET PLACE 24 PARADISE 24 KENDALL VILLAGE 16 REGA. CINEMAS 305-466 0450 7:30pm SOUTH BEACH 18 800-FANDANGO 2198 7:00pm 7:30pm 7:00pm Regular Engagements Start April 6 DG MiamiHerald.com THE MIAMI HERALD FRIDAY, MARCH 30.2007 10