The effects of time in the life and works of Gilberto Gil

On the cover of the biography wrote by Regina Zappa, Gilberto Gil appears in a close up picture—the image shows the effects of time on the songwriter’s face, an artist whose relation with subjects such as life, death, aging, youth had always been exposed in interviews and lyrics.

The relationship with tricks played by fate and with what life has in store for us is a subject of which the musician is very fond, ever since he was a young Bahia-born, pre-tropicalist, who would experiment with samba, bossa nova, and baião [Brazilian genres], in his first compositions.

“Iemanjá,” one of his first recorded songs (written in partnership with actor Othon Bastos), already narrated the sadness of a woman who deals with the possibility of her husband, a fisherman, dying out in the sea.

The view of time, of aging, emerge in the works of Gilberto Gil early on, in a subtle manner, intermediated by the relationship with family and family values, in lyrics such as “Volks Volksvagen Blue” (in which he details news he got from his parents and sister).

With the coming of maturity and arrival of his children, the songwriter’s relationship with this sort of subject gained its strongest philosophical outlines.

Just like in “Aqui e agora”—which went viral with the chorus “O melhor lugar do mundo é aqui e agora” [the best place in the world is here and now]. The song also includes the finitude of life as one of the subjects approached by Gil—in verses such as “quando ser leve ou pesado deixa de fazer sentido” [when being light or heavy does not matter anymore] and “morrer deve ser tão frio quanto na hora do parto” [dying must be as cold as the time of birth].

The effects of time have been present in two of Gilberto Gil’s songs about his relationships, written at around the same time.

When he first met Flora Giordano, the musician impressed his future wife (and manager) with a song honoring her, “Flora,” in which he pictured her at an older age and envisioned a life project with her.

The song was presented to Flora in one of her first encounters with Gil, when she decided to leave São Paulo off to vacations in Salvador, and marked the beginning of their relationship.

Turning 40 years old brought different sorts of questioning to Gilberto Gil, including the ones in the lyrics of “Tempo rei,” a classic of his repertoire, released in an album full of existentialist touches and songs versing on life and God, Raça Humana (1984).

In “Tempo rei,” the singer says that even what seems to be perfect can undergo transformations, and that “tudo agora mesmo pode estar por um segundo” [everything right now can be a just second away].

More recently, after going through health issues, Gil released the album OK OK OK (2018), in which he insists on talking about the differences between a mother and a grandmother in “Uma coisa bonitinha” (a partnership with João Donato).

He also wanted to honor doctor Roberto Kalil, who treated him at the Sírio-Libanês Hospital (“Kalil”) and talks about a friend who made turned 100 years old, in the humorous “Jacintho.”