Caetano Veloso: “Tropicalism is, first of all, due to Gil”

In an interview, the singer and songwriter declares his love and friendship to Gilberto Gil, with whom he idealized the movement that revolutionized Brazilian music.

By Instituto Gilberto Gil

Interview: Chris Fuscaldo*, journalist and music researcher

Testimony in which Caetano Veloso attributes the idealization of tropicalism to Gilberto Gil (Maio de 2020)Instituto Gilberto Gil

“Tropicalism is due to Gilberto Gil

Caetano Veloso recorded a testimony explaining the tropicalist movement for his friend and partner’s collection. In his speech, the artist from Bahia attributes the idealization of Tropicalism to his friend Gilberto Gil.

What are your memories of the first times you saw Gilberto Gil on TV? What went down in history is that your mother used to call you to see “that black guy you like.”

Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso durante a TropicáliaInstituto Gilberto Gil

Caetano Veloso:

I was proud that Neguinho do Samba, late inventor of Olodum’s beat and founder of Didá, wrote a song with a phrase my mother repeated so many times. I tell that in my book Tropical Truth and have also said it in interviews.

Gil was on a TV show in the afternoon. A TV show from Itapoã, the local TV station. I loved his manners and admired his precision in playing the guitar.

What caught your attention first in his musicality? Gil, back then, had experience with jingles. Did his communication skills impress you?

Gilberto Gil em apresentação no início da carreira (1966)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Caetano Veloso:

The jingles weren’t the first thing I heard from him, but I would get to know them soon enough. Before that, I heard him playing some bossa nova or his own things already.

His smile, his sharply defined eyebrows, beautifully drawn by genetics, everything made him a figure who communicated easily and pleasantly with anyone. The quality of the music he made took that to high and deep places.

You were introduced by Roberto Santana. What did you talk about in that first meeting?

Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso e Gal Costa (1967)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Caetano Veloso:

We talked a lot about music right away. I was a fan of his but he didn’t know me, yet he seemed as interested in me as I was in him. Naturally it was his welcoming temper that led him to be like that with whomever he met and to address people kindly.

But it was more than that. I think we talked about Carlos Lyra, already (it was a conversation of two people interested in bossa nova and everything it represented in modernizing our music and Brazil). I mention Lyra because we must have talked about João Gilberto and Tom Jobim right away.

Gilberto Gil com Tom Zé, Piti e Roberto Santana na década de 1960Instituto Gilberto Gil

But it all started with my statement of admiration for what Gil himself did. For what I saw of him on television.

Roberto Santana, who was a friend of both, already knew how much I admired “Beto” and had said something about it at the time of the introduction. The conversation about music already seemed to place me, in Gil’s eyes, as a colleague of his, though I could barely play a C major on the guitar.

On your first solo album, a text on the back cover says: “Gil, there’s no soup on Maria’s balcony today.” What were the weekly meetings at Maria Muniz’s house like?

Gilberto Gil com equipe do espetáculo Arena Canta Bahia (1965-12-01)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Caetano Veloso:

Maria Muniz, an actress at the Theater School of the University of Bahia, a very original, intelligent woman, liked us, who had appeared on the Salvador scene and were enriching the movement born in Bahia during the 1950s with the motivation of the UFBA dean, Edgard Santos.

Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso no espetáculo Arena Canta Bahia (1965-12-01)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Maria would gather our crew for soup, talking, and singing at her house’s balcony at the Suíço Boulevard—a street where I myself had lived before our family moved to the end of the Nazaré line.

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Campo da Pólvora

This so-called “boulevard” looked more like a London “crescent,” a small street with a sharp turn, but it was part of the same Nazará neighborhood, in front of the Pólvora field.

Os Doces Bárbaros em entrevista coletiva (1976)Instituto Gilberto Gil

We sang things we liked, Gal sang while playing guitar, even Bethânia eventually did that, Gil played a lot, and we showed new songs we were working on.

I remember Gil singing “Bem devagar,” me singing “Coração vagabundo,” and a samba I did for a concert which Maria’s boyfriend suggested I perform at the Anjo Azul nightclub, the most sophisticated spot in Salvador at the time.

Compilação de imagens amadoras em Super 8, sem som, da família e amigos de Gilberto Gil e de shows e carnaval baiano Compilação de imagens amadoras em Super 8, sem som, da família e amigos de Gilberto Gil e de shows e carnaval baiano - Parte 1 (Fevereiro de 1974)Instituto Gilberto Gil

The song is called “Clever Boy Samba” and, curiously, it served as a model for “Alegria, alegria,” which I wrote years later. But we talked about plays by the theater groups Teatro dos Novos and Escola de Teatro, about pre-Cinema Novo (or nouvelle vague or Fellini) movies

Gilberto Gil durante no lançamento do DVD Terra em Transe, versão restaurada do filme de 1967 (2006-04-10)Instituto Gilberto Gil

We also talked about articles from the newspaper Diário de Notícias, whose cultural page was already edited by Glauber.

It was very nice. And the soup was always good.

Compilação de imagens amadoras em Super 8, sem som, da família e amigos de Gilberto Gil e de shows e carnaval baiano Compilação de imagens amadoras em Super 8, sem som, da família e amigos de Gilberto Gil e de shows e carnaval baiano - Parte 2 (Fevereiro de 1974)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Carlos Calado’s book, Tropicália: A História de uma Revolução Musical [Tropicália: History of a Musical Revolution], says that Gil was one of the people responsible for you to start doing music professionally. Is that true?

Caetano Veloso em foto da década de 1980 (1982)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Caetano Veloso:

I loved singing songs since I was a little boy and even did some piano songs in Santo Amaro. The guitar seemed impossible to me. I learned about three chords. But watching Gil play, I developed my ability to write and play songs that went a little beyond my restricted talent.

I would ask him once in a while about beats and harmonies. Gil had liked my music, so to speak, without hearing anything other than my opinions and observations.

There came an invitation from the group Teatro dos Novos (former students of the UFBA Theater School) for a performance at the inauguration week of the Vila Velha Theatre, built by this group for their own presentations, and I had a handful of songs written.

Tom Zé, Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso na gravação do programa Som Brasil Especial Tropicália, da TV Globo (1997-11-11)Instituto Gilberto Gil

I was motivated to contribute to the growth of production and prestige of the group formed fundamentally by Gal, Bethânia, Gil, and me (not forgetting names like Tom Zé, Perna Fróes, Alcivando Luz, Djalma Correia…).

Gilberto Gil em show na década de 1970 (Década de 1970)Instituto Gilberto Gil

However, I always did that with the intimate decision of trying to make movies and leave the music to the real musicians.

Gilberto Gil com equipe da Primeira Feira Paulista de Opinião (1968-06-01)Instituto Gilberto Gil

When, with that already well on its way, with Bethânia a national idol, we all doing a concert directed by Augusto Boal in São Paulo, I told Gil I wouldn’t be committed to music any more, and he answered: “If you stop making music, I will too.”

Gilberto Gil com amigosInstituto Gilberto Gil

This was repeated in a similar way a few years later in Tropicalism. So, yes, I only make music because of Gil: he taught me what I was capable of learning and then he made sure I didn’t abandon the challenge.

The other day, at a meeting at Gege Produções, we talked about Gil’s first concert in Salvador, at the Vila Velha Theater, in 1965, which you directed. The concert was called Inventário and had a new song by him called “Trovoada.” Do you remember it? Can you tell us how the two of you planned it, how the concert went, what was in the repertoire, and how you took over directing your friend?

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Caetano Veloso:

I always laugh at Gil because he has a weak memory: mine was always great. I remember almost everything in detail and without error. Gil remembers things wrong and forgets a lot. But in this case of his concert in Vila Velha, I don’t know why, I don’t have any clear or safe memories.

Caetano Veloso e Gilberto Gil no show Barra 69, apresentado antes da partida para o exílio (1969-07-20)Instituto Gilberto Gil

You mention the song “Trovoada”: I don’t remember anything with this title. It’s mysterious to me that I’ve forgotten so much about this show. I remember the concerts we did together and I know we planned to start doing solo concerts.

Foto de Maria Bethânia enviada a Gilberto GilInstituto Gilberto Gil

The first one was Bethânia's, in 1964, before she came to Rio to perform at Opinião Theater. I remember Calazans Neto’s set, made for the performance of They Don't Use Black-Tie, which we kept for Bethânia’s show. She sang “Opinião” and “Acender as velas” in front of a piece of favela.

Caetano Veloso e Dedé GadelhaInstituto Gilberto Gil

I remember mine, in which Dedé participated and which Duda Machado scripted for me. And I know Gal was the only one of the four not to do a solo at the Vila. But I only remember that Gil’s solo happened and that I took part in the production. But no details.

How was the moment when you had the ideas that generated Tropicalism? Literature tells us that Gil, already a Beatles fan, was in Caruaru, was very much influenced by the music there, and sought you out to talk. Was that how it happened?

Gal Costa na estreia do programa Divino Maravilhoso (10/28/1968)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Caetano Veloso:

We always talked. Gil had been fascinated by the recording of “Strawberry fields Forever” by The Beatles. I, living at the Solar da Fossa hotel, used to hear a lot of things about mass culture, quoting Rogério Duarte, Edgar Morin, and Walter Benjamin.

Elis Regina e Maria Bethânia na década de 60Instituto Gilberto Gil

I listened a lot to José Agrippino de Paula, the writer who also made plays and movies. One day, Bethânia told me I needed to see the Jovem Guarda TV show, by Roberto and Erasmo Carlos: “MPB is lacking vitality; in Jovem Guarda there is much more poetic vitality.”

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Gil went to Recife for a while. When he returned, under the impact of the Banda de Pífaros de Caruaru, he came with a very definite program in his head. And, as usual, he spoke to me first.

Gilberto Gil recebe integrantes da Banda de Pife Princesa do Agreste, de Pernambuco, no seu estúdio durante ensaio para o show Futurível (2010-11-01)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Everything he said was like a summary of the questions that Rogério Duarte, José Agrippino, and Bethânia were suggesting: “We are under a violent regime and our music does not respond with the corresponding violence…”

“…The Beatles and the Caruaru band have a lot to teach us; we are part of the mass culture, we cannot continue on with a defensive attitude and a weakening nationalism…

Gilberto Gil e Roberto Carlos no programa Jovem Guarda (1967)Instituto Gilberto Gil

“… We have to pay attention to Roberto Carlos and do something like the Beatles do, only with our own history.” 


 I was excited! From that came all that, more than a year later, came to be called Tropicalism.

Tell me about the first song you wrote together. What is it like, writing with Gil?

Caetano Veloso:

We don’t have a lot of partnerships. That’s because we both make lyrics and music. I wonder what my first partnership with Gil was. I think it was “No dia em que eu vim-me embora.” “Eles,” which is also on my first album, is ours. “Beira-mar” is a partnership that I think is very beautiful.

And there are things in Doces Bárbaros (he did an excerpt of the lyrics for “São João Xangô Menino”) and then in Tropicália 2. “Haiti” is a special case: I had done the whole lyrics (the “rap”) and also the music, including the change to the chorus.

Tropicália 2 Livro de partituras com canções do álbum Tropicália 2, de Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso (1993)Instituto Gilberto Gil

But I didn’t have a beat. I played only the chords on the guitar at each tempo. Gil created that riff which goes under the spoken song and which, in the end, characterizes the song. I included his name as a co-author and so we recorded the song.

Letra da música Chega de Mágoa, manuscrita por Gilberto Gil Página 1 (1985)Instituto Gilberto Gil

I like all the songs we did together and, of course, I’d like to do more. I love “Chega de mágoa,” which was composed by a group I was also part of but which owes 80 percent of its musical composition to Gil. He takes the guitar and it comes out easy.

Is it true that you encouraged Gil a lot at the time of Tropicália, and that he was even a little afraid that the innovations you created would be understood as provocations?

Gilberto Gil no III Festival da Música Popular Brasileira (Outubro de 1967)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Caetano Veloso:

Gil has a mysterious personality. I was already recording my tropicalist album with arrangements by Júlio Medaglia and Damiano Cozzella, Rogério Duprat had already returned to São Paulo and contacted Gil, introducing him to the Mutantes.

Gilberto Gil e Os Mutantes em ensaio para o III Festival da Música Popular Brasileira (1967)Instituto Gilberto Gil

I had already sung “Alegria, alegria” with the Beat Boys, which led the audience to boo me at the beginning of the song (which later won over most people and became a radio hit), and Gil, with “Domingo no parque,” had already rehearsed with the Mutantes under Duprat's divine baton.

Gilberto Gil no III Festival da Música Popular Brasileira (1967)Instituto Gilberto Gil

At the time of the event, Gil chickened out and stayed at the hotel, wrapped in his blanket, afraid. The owner and director of TV Record (Paulo Machado de Carvalho; Bishop Macedo had not yet dreamed of creating the Universal Church) had to call him minutes before the song was announced.

He went and the song was a nit, having been respected since the introduction.

Then, with my album with
“Tropicália” and “Superbacana” and everything else already playing on the radio and me singing on Chacrinha TV shows, a tropicalist night was planned at a São Paulo dancing.

Caetano Veloso na estreia do programa Divino Maravilhoso (10/28/1968)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Big names from Rádio Nacional would be in it (Dalva de Oliveira, Linda and Dircinha Batista, Grande Otelo, Aracy de Almeida…). We rehearsed in the afternoon and, in the beginning of the night, Vicente Celestino, the opera-style singer by whom I recorded “Coração materno,” died of a heart attack.

Sisters Batista and Aracy demanded the concert go through. Celestino’s widow, the filmmaker and singer Gilda de Abreu, asked us to go on with the concert, saying her husband’s dream had always been to die singing—and Gil, frightened, did not want to go on at all.

I had to go to his apartment and talk emphatically and eloquently until he said yes to going. In both cases, both backstage and when he performed and sang, he didn’t show a trace of having been terrified minutes before.

According to the book 1968: O Ano que Não Terminou [1968: The Year That Didn’t End], Gilberto Gil was at your house on the day of the arrest by the military, sleeping in the next room while you were being detained. He left and went to his own apartment to wait for the police to arrive. How did you feel about this proof of his friendship?

Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso prestes à partir para o exílio (1969)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Caetano Veloso:

Federal police officers came to get me and said they’d go to Gil’s house to get him. They didn’t say they were making an arrest, they claimed the military wanted clarification. But I was afraid when one of them told me to bring a toothbrush and toothpaste.

I thought if they found the other “suspect” in the first respondent’s house everything might get more complicated. I remember asking Dedé to tell Gil to go home and wait for the announcement. I could have told him to run or hide.

Gilberto Gil com Sandra Gadelha e Pedro Gil na casa de Maria Bethânia no Rio de Janeiro (1973)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Gil had started a relationship with Sandra, my then-wife Dedé’s sister. She had gone to spend a few days in São Paulo with us. They started a romance and Gil slept with her at our apartment, which was big. Dedé warned Gil without the cops noticing.

Passeata dos Cem Mil nos tempos de ditadura militar, da qual Gilberto Gil participou (1968-06-26)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Gil went home and waited. When we stopped by the door of his building, I felt guilty, as if I was arresting him. Gil showed a firm, calm courage—which lasted through all our time in prison—of which I wasn't capable at that time.

What other proofs of friendship has Gil given you?

Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso na praiaInstituto Gilberto Gil

What other proofs of friendship has Gil given you?

Since that meeting on Chile Street, we’ve always been much more than friends. There was the certainty of an almost missionary meeting of partners. I still feel this today. We both always managed to keep that something there, here, everywhere.

Gilberto Gil com Pedro Gil e Caetano Veloso, após saída da prisão (1976)Instituto Gilberto Gil

We haven’t ever even behaved as friends generally do, with shared confidences and bonds of formal loyalty. It’s always been something beyond that. We are more like brothers and lovers than friends. There is a respect that goes over our own eventual low points.

Jorge Ben, Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso no encerramento do evento Phono 73 (1973)Instituto Gilberto Gil

As I once said: I don’t believe in God, but I believe in Gil and Gil believes in Him. But in fact there is a complementarity that often puts us in opposite positions. When he discovers something (usually before me), I don’t see it.

Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso em show da turnê do álbum Tropicália 2 (1993)Instituto Gilberto Gil

When I do see it, he seems to have forgotten it or lost interest in it. And it’s not just with time. Places reveal very different things to him and to me. But what we have been doing, without having planned, is learning to be independent of all this.

Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso em show beneficente no Canegie Hall, em Nova York (1989)Instituto Gilberto Gil

And to each be the old man he can and deserves to be. Without symmetries. But we can’t erase what brought us here.

After the exile, did you feel there was any separation between your works?

Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso em encontro na casa de Dedé Gadelha na década de 1980 (Década de 1980)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Caetano Veloso:

I stayed in Bahia for three years. I only got out to do concerts and came back quickly. My new start was with Araçá Azul, an album made in a few days in a studio in São Paulo, without a producer and with my decision to not even write songs before the recording period. It was an experimental record.

Gil came back with the magnificent Expresso 2222, which has “Pipoca moderna,” with the Banda de Pífaros, which has “Chiclete com banana”—and which has “Ele and Eu,” which talks about our complementarity and symmetrically opposed situation. It says everything I tried to say in one of the answers above.

Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso na década de 1970 (1979)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Around the 1970s, I radicalized in rebellion with the creation of the band Outra Banda da Terra, with whom I made about five records without a producer entering the studio, all in an anarchic atmosphere with a screaming Brazilian sound technique. Gil went, like many of our artists, to the “LA” (Los Angeles) side.

Gilberto Gil e Marco Mazzola recebem o disco de platina pelo compacto da música Não Chore Mais (1979)Instituto Gilberto Gil

But that was also part of the complementarity. I remember not liking “Realce.” I felt repulsed by words like that of the title [in English, “Highlight”] and the mood of disco nights. My “Odara” had been an adherence to the taste for nightly dancing, but in contrast to its compulsive aspects.

Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Maria Bethânia e Caetano Veloso à época do show Doces Bárbaros (1976)Instituto Gilberto Gil

And my first album with A Outra Banda da Terra shocked critics and drove buyers away. But we insisted on it. Gil and Gal were identifying with the “well-recorded” pop. I felt closer to Bethânia in that sense. But none of these nuances caused any distance or discomfort between us.

Gil was your muse in songs like “Gilberto misterioso.” What is it like to be able to dedicate a song to a great friend?

Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso e Maria Bethânia em show de reunião dos Doces Bárbaros no Parque Ibirapuera (2002-12-07)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Caetano Veloso:

It's always an emotional delight to be able to write a song for a friend. In the one you quoted, it was almost a miracle.

Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso na porta do hotel em Londres, para o show da turnê europeia Dois Amigos, Um Século de Música (2015-07-01)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Reading a book by Souzândrade, the 18th-century poet from Maranhão who Augusto and Haroldo de Campos critically resurrected, I found this passage that seemed to describe Gil: “Gil begets a Gil nightingale.”

Caetano Veloso e Gilberto Gil no carnaval da BahiaInstituto Gilberto Gil

I wrote a small piece in which I myself play the piano (it was the Araçá Azul!), repeating that small verse, and named it with the nickname I had given to Gil many years ago: Gilberto Misterioso.

Flora Gil com Caetano Veloso no lançamento do filme Eu, Tu, Eles (2000-08-18)Instituto Gilberto Gil

I was very happy that on a record with my music recorded by Japanese artists, this track was chosen by one of them: heard there (I think with a Japanese sound clarity that improves the quality of the piece), the song seemed to me to be worthy of the honoree.

What is your dialogue like today? Is there any point of folkloric disagreement?

Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso no show Tropicália Duo (1994)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Caetano Veloso:

I’ve had almost no direct dialogue with Gil lately. One night he called me—on the cell phone of a son or a co-worker, because I don’t have a cell phone—, I was in the car and he said that he had reread Tropical Truth and felt a strong desire to see me.

Gilberto Gil com os amigos Caetano Veloso e Regina Casé (1989)Instituto Gilberto Gil

The summer before this last one, we were together at Regina Casé’s house in Salvador and had a little chat. After that, it’s been some time since I’ve seen Gil or talked to him.

Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso em show da turnê do álbum Tropicália 2 (1993)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Curiously, you asked me for this interview when I was considering writing him an e-mail with updates about many things. Including fundamental things from our formation in Bahia. I still have that in mind.

I would like you to say something that defines what it was like to celebrate 50 years of friendship on stage.

Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso em show para o Festival Jazz à Vienne, da turnê europeia Dois Amigos, Um Século de Música (2015-07-03)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Caetano Veloso:

It was really good. I suffered a little during the first concerts because of my technical inability in the face of Gil’s musical exuberance.

Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso em show da turnê Dois Amigos, Um Século de Música em Portugal (2015-07-31)Instituto Gilberto Gil

But I have always been deeply happy to hear “Não tenho medo da morte” on so many different nights and to sing along with him some songs in which our voices sounded good together.

Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso na gravação do programa Amigos, Sons e Palavras, exibido pelo Canal Brasil, da Globosat (2018-04-18)Instituto Gilberto Gil

Credits: Story

Exhibit credits

Interview*, assembly and copyediting: Chris Fuscaldo (*collaboration from Ricardo Schott) 
Acknowledgments: Caetano Veloso and Uns Produções

General credits

Editing and curating: Chris Fuscaldo / Garota FM
Musical content research: Ceci Alves, Chris Fuscaldo, and Ricardo Schott
MinC content research: Carla Peixoto, Ceci Alves, and Laura Zandonadi
Photo subtitles: Anna Durão, Carla Peixoto, Ceci Alves, Chris Fuscaldo, Daniel Malafaia, Gilberto Porcidonio, Kamille Viola, Laura Zandonadi, Lucas Vieira, Luciana Azevedo, Patrícia Sá Rêgo, Pedro Felitte, Ricardo Schott, Roni Filgueiras, and Tito Guedes
Subtitle copyediting: Anna Durão, Carla Peixoto, Laura Zandonadi, and Patrícia Sá Rêgo
Data editing: Isabela Marinho
Acknowledgments: Gege Produções, Gilberto Gil, Flora Gil, Gilda Mattoso, Fafá Giordano, Maria Gil, Meny Lopes, Nelci Frangipani, Cristina Doria, Daniella Bartolini, and all photographers and characters in the stories
All media: Instituto Gilberto Gil

Credits: All media
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