Gilberto Gil: From Past to Future

More than four decades later, Gil spoke about the songs he had written in prison, saying: "The fact that the very core of my existential condition—my body—had been violated; that I was deprived of my freedom to act and to move; to have full control of my space, my time,... 

..."my free will, and my choice, perhaps led me to dream of alternatives and, subconsciously, to think about humankind's physical and mental extensions; our mechanical creations...

Cérebro Eletrônico is a futurist song that seems to predict something that is commonplace today: artificial intelligence, with its widespread benefits and the risks of losing control of it, as foretold by the British author George Orwell in his book 1984. 

The song, however, was only a brief part of what Gil was beginning to see and experience in the middle of the Cold War: the space race and the advent of IBM computers capable of calculating distances between the Earth and space for NASA, with all their exaggerations and repercussions.

It is interesting to note Gil's conciliatory approach towards the future uses of new technologies: he never sets them apart from the human dimension and what they have or may offer that is relational, allowing them to bridge hearts and minds. 

 Strictly speaking, Gilberto Gil does not believe in the (dominator) matrix, because he always grounds the discussion in humankind's ability to control machines and not the other way round, as the Cérebro Eletrônico lyrics say:

“Because I am alive 
Oh, I am very alive 
And I know 
That death is our primitive impulse 
And I know 
That no electronic brain will help me 
With its iron buttons and its glass eyes."

Another key aspect of Gilberto Gil's relationship with the future is that he uses his music and lyrics to draw people's attention to the inescapable interchange between technology and tradition.

 Far from these being exclusive categories, Gil sees technology as a way of communicating between worlds; a way of building bridges for sharing and exchanging.

Such a fusion can also be found in the 2008 song Banda Larga Cordel from the album of the same name. It, too, starts from this poetic communication between worlds, opening up an expressway to other horizons. His lyrics say:

“The whole world in a broad discussion
The neuroscientist, the economist
Opinion of someone who lives on paved streets 
Opinion of someone who's not on the list
Opinion of someone who says no.”

Banda Larga Cordel cleverly creates a rich metaphor combining two threads: one that connects the whole world, and another that entwines readers and writers of a very specific type of Brazilian literature from a particular time and place: literatura de cordel or string literature.

Written in rhyming verse and illustrated with woodcuts, they weave poetic stories on themes that are only too human. Banda larga, or broadband, on the other hand, is the thread that connects the planet at high speed, making its borders disappear. 

The text reveals the musician's interest in new technologies.

First part of the press release for the Banda Larga Cordel album

Communication is the focus of Gil's futurist work

The song Pela Internet (On the Internet), which Gil recorded in 1996 for his 1997 album Quanta, Gil reveals his amazement at having the world at his fingertips through a global computer network.

In this new era, opting to use the Internet means there is no need to wait for a line, leave messages through other people, or experience poor-quality sound. Gil's track is a tribute to the old samba song Pela Telefone (By Telephone), referencing the original and bringing it into the modern era. 

Written by Donga and Mauro de Almeida, Pelo Telefone was the first phonographic recording ever made in Brazil when it was recorded in 1917. It, too, told of the wonders of how life was being shaped by technology and distances shortened by telecommunications. 

One example is his rewording of the song Pelo Telefone, in which he updated the lines... 

"Rio's chief of police 
tells me on the cell phone
that a game of video poker 
is being played in Praça Onze!"

Driven by Flora's dream and Gil's poetic flash of inspiration, the teams at IBM, the telecommunications company Embratel, and the newspaper O Globo pooled their technical resources and worked for months to make the idea happen. 

Of course, live streaming is so commonplace nowadays that anyone with a smartphone and Internet connection can do it. A curious footnote was the name of the IBM software used for the real-time streaming: IBM Bamba, perhaps in tribute to samba and to Donga, Mauro de Almeida, and Gil.

After making history for getting art and technology to work hand in hand, Gilberto Gil included Pelo Internet on his Quanta album. This was another piece of work reflecting his interest and studies in art, science, and the mystical. 

Past, present, and future—all in flux under the songwriter's watchful eye—are contained in a space the size of what he calls an "antena parabolicamará," combining the Portuguese for satellite dish, antena parabólica, with the word camará, meaning comrade. Gil sets out his inspired predictions in a timeline in which he can always anticipate what is to come.