Gilberto Gil’s story with the guitar

Musician Gilberto Gil was born with the accordion, at a time when the instrument was extremely popular among teenagers and young adults in Northeast Brazil in the 1950s. He never abandoned the bellows and basses, and posed with the instrument for photos during several phases of his career.

However, when he discovered the six strings, he never stopped again. All it took was discovering João Gilberto’s beat, still as a teen, for the aspiring singer and songwriter to ask his mother for an acoustic guitar

“The guitar was my basic instrument. João Gilberto was my first great influence. Then Jorge Ben. There was already a very palpable residue from Dorival Caymmi, with that regionality in his guitar,” Gil says.

Dona Claudina gave him some money and there he went, to get the guitar from one of Brazil’s department stores. Before that, his sister Gildina already had a guitar at home, but wasn’t very interested in learning to play the instrument.

Gil took up the instrument by himself, at 16, using two guitar methods he bought with the instrument—one more classic and another with sheets. The first João Gilberto album, Chega de Saudade (1959) got the singer even more excited.

On the boat, he met guitar player Clodoaldo Brito, Codó, who he already knew from Rádio Sociedade da Bahia. Codó saw a teenage Gilberto Gil with the guitar, asked for the instrument and tuned it for the beginner.

Gil started to write songs when he was a beginner in the instrument, and at 18 he was already performing his own songs in the Jorge Santos show, on Saturday afternoons, on Salvador’s TV Itapuã.

With the beginning of Gil’s professional career, him and the guitar became inseparable in photos, concerts, TV footage, and even album covers.

Right on the single “Sua música, sua interpretação,” released in 1963 by the JS label (owned by friend Jorge Santos), the cover drawing is the singer’s silhouette with his instrument. In the photo, the artist posing for a 1970s album.

On the single “Roda/Procissão,” released by RCA in 1965, Gil—with a gesture typically linked to the universe of song festivals—holds the guitar as if showing it to the audience.

On the album “Louvação,” his debut with Philips in 1967, the instrument is once again front and center. And Gil’s discography includes several records which, looking at the cover, leave no doubt that they are the work of a guitar player.

Among them is Gilberto Gil, recorded in London in 1971 or Expresso 2222, from his return to Brazil in 1972 (with an internal cover showing a photo of the singer in blue tones, singing and playing the instrument), as well as the lively Gilberto Gil Ao Vivo, recorded at the Tuca in 1974.

There is also the live record from the Montreux Festival, 1978. Gil’s dedication to the Ovation electric guitar, one of Al Di Meola and Paul Simon’s favorite, became a verse in a song made by Rita Lee in his honor, “Giló,” performed at the Refestança concert which the two shared in 1977.

Gil’s career is also punctuated by acoustic recordings, some of which have become historical and others, quite popular.

Gil & Jorge – Ogum, Xangô, a meeting of Gil and Jorge Ben, came out in 1975 and showed the two musicians accompanying one another on the instrument, with two percussionists, in reinterpretations that often go beyond the “average” time of a music played on the radio.

This soundtrack only took on the form of a record in 1998, in the Ensaio Geral box, produced by Marcelo Fróes, and after that got a separate edition.

Gil would come to play the electric guiter, with time - in the 1970s he would already appear on stages playing it. But, the guitar was still "his" instrument, as could be seen in albums like Gilberto Gil Em Concerto, recorded live in 1986 at the Copacabana Palace.

In almost all tracks, the musician concentrated on voice and guitar.

Being a fan of stage recording, the singer brought new value to the instrument’s presence in his work in records like Unplugged, from 1995, and BandaDois, from 2009, which he recorded live alongside sons José and Bem Gil.

Between one and the other, in 2006, there was Gil Luminoso, which had been recorded back in 1999 as a complement for the homonymous book written by Bené Fonteles and had the singer reinterpreting songs like “Super homem – a canção” and “Aqui e agora” only with guitar and singing.

In 2014, Gil official showed himself as a João Gilberto fan when he joined his classic hits to sambas from the bossa-nova singer’s repertoire, in Gilbertos Samba. And, in 2016, he joined forces and guitars with old friend Caetano Veloso on the commemorative tour Dois Amigos – Um Século de Música.

Amidst all that, he toured European countries in 2014 to promote Gilbertos Samba with a solo tour in which he sang and played guitar on top of a simple portable stage platform with an equally simple structure, which he defined as:

“Me, my wife (manager Flora Gil), and my guitar.”

Gilberto Gil

On stage, playing his favorite instrument, Gil changed the world’s music and became fulfilled.