Quanta Live: Gilberto Gil at the Grammy Awards

The Grammy Awards are considered one of the most important awards in the global record market.

First awarded by the North American organization Recording Academy in 1958, several Brazilian musicians—including João Gilberto, Sérgio Mendes, Caetano Veloso, Milton Nascimento, and Gilberto Gil—have been nominated for and won a Grammy.

Forty years after the first Grammy, the man who wrote Aquele Abraço received the Best World Music Album award for his album Quanta Gente Veio Ver (Quanta Live). The 1998 live recording stemmed from his tour to promote Quanta, his double CD that had hit the market in 1997.

More than 20 years later, however, that World Music category remains a topic of controversy. In 2020, the Recording Academy changed the name to Global Music.

"The grievance is about the colonialist bias in the term used. I myself wrote an article for a North American magazine defending the decision to adopt a more inclusive name …

… one which would encompass all types and genres of international popular music, regardless of where it comes from," he told the Globo newspaper in 2020.

While touring between his Unplugged and Quanta albums, Gil began introducing some of the songs from his forthcoming album. One of them, Guerra Santa, was even made into a music video on the TV program Fantástico.

That same year, Gilberto Gil would record the first takes for his new album, with arrangements by Sérgio Sá. These recordings, however, would be set aside and Gil would only return to them in 1996.

When Caetano Veloso turned up at the Quanta concert in May, he told Gilberto Gil that the show should be recorded as a live album. Having received similar remarks from other friends and figures in the industry, the singer set about making the recording happen. 

At Warner Music, however, they were not very open to the idea. The singer had just released a long album, with 26 songs dealing with a range of heavy topics, and that was not proving an easy sell in Brazil in 1997.

Not to mention that the record company had also released another version of the album as a single CD.

With no chance of convincing them, Gil set off on his customary European tour, where he would be backed by Arthur Maia (bass), Celso Fonseca (electric guitar), Gustavo Di Dalva (percussion), Jorginho Gomes (drums), Leonardo Reis (percussion), Paulo Calasans (keyboard), and Raul Mascarenhas (wind). 

Over a series of concerts, the musicians were able to experiment with the playlist at length on stage, deciding on the arrangements that would be heard on the live album.

The recording, which would be known internationally as Quanta Live, was conceived over five months. In January, when he went to record three Carnival tracks (which would end up as bonus tracks on Quanta Gente Veio Ver) ...

… Gilberto Gil gave the recordings to Paulo Junqueiro, the then artistic director at Warner Music. Junqueira was so impressed with the quality that he offered to do the mixing for the album—a job he had not done for years. 

Released in February at Carnival time—when record sales tend to be low—the CD sold 50,000 copies in the first month.

Gilberto Gil was surprised to be nominated for the Grammy and even more taken aback to win it. "I never thought that I was going to win," he told the TV program Roda Viva.

"It was Arthur Maia and Jorginho Gomes who rang me to say: 'Gil, our album has won!'" he added. 

The singer recalled that, on the day when the result was to be announced but before he knew he had won, he was in the historic center of Salvador with the afoxé group Filhos de Gandhy and a lot of passers-by were shouting their support: "Gil, today's the day! Today's the day!"