Gilberto Gil: I’m not afraid of death
The difference (metaphysical and excessively human) between death and dying in the singer and songwriter’s songs and life.
By Instituto Gilberto Gil
Text: Ceci Alves, filmmaker and journalist
For the singer and composer Gilberto Gil, everything and nothing were always just sides of the same coin - from there comes the naturalness with which the artist has always dealt with the theme of death. For him, it is this “nothing”, which is not an existential emptiness. It doesn't mean the erasure, a finitude
Gilberto Gil na casa de campo da família em Araras, durante o período de quarentena pelo coronavírus (Abril de 2020)Instituto Gilberto Gil
Gil reinforces this idea when, in a recent interview with O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, he was asked to reflect on the Covid-19 pandemic and the new paths of humanity in the face of this emerging situation that reshaped reality...
When asked about the imminence of death during the health crisis that the world is going through, Gilberto Gil replied:
Gilberto Gil in scenes from the movie Tempo Rei (1996)Instituto Gilberto Gil
"Everything right now can be for a second," says the verse of the song (Tempo Rei). My heart has always been ready (at least, always trying to be ready) for whatever comes and goes. life there is always a place for all or nothing...
Gilberto Gil in scenes from the movie Tempo Rei (1996)Instituto Gilberto Gil
"...I think that, even though it's not easy, it's necessary to wait for whatever it is. As Caetano says: 'We have to be alert and strong, we don't have time to fear death'."
Gilberto Gil e Caetano Veloso em fotos para o álbum Tropicália 2 (1993)Instituto Gilberto Gil
It is not by chance that Gilberto Gil chooses this phrase by the singer and friend-brother Caetano Veloso to finish off his thoughts. The artist does not face death with fear, since it is inevitable and inescapable.
Gilberto Gil, Ana Oliveira e equipe técnica local durante as filmagens do documentário Disposições Amoráveis, na Índia (Setembro de 2019)Instituto Gilberto Gil
“Death is certain for all of us, … it will always be on the horizon. … Death is the queen who reigns alone. It does not need our so-called ‘fear’ to exist, as I said in one of my songs.”
Faced, then, with this inexorable condition, serenity is fundamental to emptying oneself and removing the issue of death from an all-too-human point of view, bringing it to a metaphysical view:
Gilberto Gil e Ana Oliveira durante as filmagens do documentário Disposições Amoráveis, na Índia (Setembro de 2019)Instituto Gilberto Gil
"You will start again through death. (...) We will only be saved in the possibility of the next generations."
The phrase was said by Gilberto Gil in an interview with environmentalist and former minister of the Environment Marina Silva and with anthropologist and former National Secretary of Public Security Luiz Eduardo Soares, in the book Disposições Amoráveis, organized by writer Ana Oliveira (2015).
Gilberto Gil in a hotel in the Atacama Desert at the time of the filming of the movie Disposições Amoráveis (2019-06-29)Instituto Gilberto Gil
Thus, for Gilberto Gil, the fear we harbor of the end, which he metaphorically calls the “final explosion”, is much less the fear of the “unknown”, which would exist after this life, and much more an attachment to the “known ”, to the comfort zone in which the being has always been circumscribed.
Gilberto Gil participa da gravação do documentário Disposições Amoráveis, dirigido por Ana Oliveira (2019-07-02)Instituto Gilberto Gil
Fear comes from this rupture that the concept of death promotes in this idea of continuum.
“Não tenho medo da morte” [I’m not afraid of death]
Throughout his life and work, Gilberto Gil professes that human beings create a need for continuation beyond themselves and their temporal sequence, which gives him the impression of something perennial on Earth. In the video, he plays another composition about fear.
Throughout his life and work, Gilberto Gil professes that human beings create a need for continuation beyond themselves and their temporal sequence, which gives him the impression of something perennial on Earth. In the video, he plays another composition about fear.
Throughout his life and work, Gilberto Gil professes that human beings create a need for continuation beyond themselves and their temporal sequence, which gives him the impression of something perennial on Earth. In the video, he plays another composition about fear.
Throughout his life and work, Gilberto Gil professes that human beings create a need for continuation beyond themselves and their temporal sequence, which gives him the impression of something perennial on Earth. In the video, he plays another composition about fear.
Gilberto Gil em estreia paulista do show do álbum Banda Larga Cordel (2008-10-31)Instituto Gilberto Gil
After his phase as minister of Culture
In 2008, just out of the Brazilian Ministry of Culture—where he stayed for five years—, the former minister released the record Banda Larga Cordel, the first one with new sings in ten years, and soon afterwards went on a tour of the country.
Gilberto Gil em estreia paulista do show do álbum Banda Larga Cordel (2008-10-31)Instituto Gilberto Gil
As a result of his stay in the ministry, a callus in the throat which resized his voice, had to be treated, and showed to be peremptory in his decision to leave the public administration and return to his career as a musician.
In this context of a life and career revision, Gilberto Gil says “Não tenho medo da morte” came to him in a single breath, as if whispered to him, on a sleepless night in Seville, Spain.
Gilberto Gil em estreia paulista do show do álbum Banda Larga Cordel (2008-10-31)Instituto Gilberto Gil
Something which, for him, comes so naturally because it is the fruit of a process—the thought of death does not haunt him, nor is it heavy for him. It is a pondering about the act of being alive, and it sprouts precisely because of this act.
Gilberto Gil em ensaio fotográfico para a revista IstoéInstituto Gilberto Gil
About this, Gil answers in an interview to Ana Oliveira and Nelson Motta, in the work cited:
“Thinking about death is an issue for everyone. And it is met in several ways. For some, as refusal: ‘I don’t want to think about it, let’s put it aside.’ Something that comes, but is rebuffed. … As a singer and songwriter, death is a creating source of thinking…
“… I remembered Smetak saying to me: ‘Think about death every day’ (laughs). Thinking about it as an existential exercise, of understanding, approaching the issues that need to be understood, that need to be treated and considered by the living. I got used to thinking.”
Love x death
Gilberto Gil in the program Na Trilha da Canção of the Brazilian channel GNT, in 2013 (2013-09-04)Instituto Gilberto Gil
And thus, the theme of death has always permeated, like this form of existential exercise, a good part of Gilberto Gil's work. Even in songs in which one would not suppose that she was the protagonist, such as Domingo no Parque. Love and death, in this 1967 composition, dialogue...
Gilberto Gil in the program Na Trilha da Canção of the Brazilian channel GNT, in 2013 (2013-09-04)Instituto Gilberto Gil
...flirt, collate, until they come together, as if complementary. When talking about Domingo no Parque in Disposições Amoráveis, Gilberto Gil compares love and death, even putting love in an even greater degree of danger than the harvest of life itself:
Gilberto Gil no show da gravação do DVD BandaDois (2009-12-28)Instituto Gilberto Gil
“Love is harder than death, because death—in spite of its extraordinary discharge of annulment, of threat to the disappearance of the human being from its individuality—is inexorable and no reasonable mediations can be made about it…
“… Not love. Love is the permanent act of the individualized human being, it is a permanent choice. Love … is a permanent struggle in each person’s interior.”
The song had historical importance, since it practically launched the artist’s career at TV Record’s III Festival of Popular Brazilian Music, in 1967.
According to this perspective, in “Não Tenho Medo da Morte,” while Gil deepens these metaphysical notes that always revolve in his creator’s mind, he dissects the issue of the ineffability of death in a very simple, even prosaic way. When writing the verses [loosely translated]: “I am not afraid of death/ But I am afraid of dying/ What would be the difference/ You may ask/ It is that death is already after/ I stop breathing/ Dying is still here/ In life, in the sun, in the air/ There can be pain/ Or the need to piss,” the singer and songwriter returns to the issue of the too human feeling of attachment to what there is and what one knows, the will to perennialize oneself, to guarantee its continuity, instilling, in the entity, the fear of dying.
Banda Larga Cordel
“It’s because there is always this question: How can we not be afraid of death? Everybody is afraid of dying… But isn’t there a difference between being afraid of dying and being afraid of death?”
On his YouTube channel, on the playlist Gilberto Gil Comenta as Músicas de seu Novo Álbum Banda Larga Cordel [Gilberto Gil Comments on Songs from His New Album, Banda Larga Cordel], he says the following about this specific song: “It’s because there is always this question: How can we not be afraid of death? Everybody is afraid of dying… But isn’t there a difference between being afraid of dying and being afraid of death? That’s what I wanted to address in this song, this notion that in dying it is you who dies, so it is still a human issue. Death, the afterlife, isn’t a human issue.” As the song says [loosely translated]: “Death is after/ There will be no one/ Like me here, now/ Thinking about the afterlife/ There won’t be an afterlife anymore/ The afterlife will be now … I will have to die/ Knowing I’m going.”
Exhibit credits
Text and research: Ceci Alves
Assembly: Patrícia Sá Rêgo
General credits
Editing and curation: Chris Fuscaldo / Garota FM
Musical content research: Ceci Alves, Chris Fuscaldo, Laura Zandonadi e Ricardo Schott
Ministry of Culture content research: Carla Peixoto, Ceci Alves, Chris Fuscaldo
Captions: Anna Durão, Carla Peixoto, Ceci Alves, Chris Fuscaldo, Daniel Malafaia, Fernanda Pimentel, Gilberto Porcidonio, Kamille Viola, Laura Zandonadi, Lucas Vieira, Luciana Azevedo, Patrícia Sá Rêgo, Pedro Felitte, Ricardo Schott, Roni Filgueiras e Tito Guedes
Data editing: Isabela Marinho and Marco Konopacki
Gege Produções Review: Cristina Doria
Acknowledgements Gege Produções, Gilberto Gil, Flora Gil, Gilda Mattoso, Fafá Giordano, Maria Gil, Meny Lopes, Nelci Frangipani, Cristina Doria, Daniella Bartolini e todos os autores das fotos e personagens da história
All media: Instituto Gilberto Gil
*Every effort has been made to credit the images, audios and videos and correctly tell the story about the episodes narrated in the exhibitions. If you find errors and/or omissions, please contact us by email atendimentogil@gege.com.br
