Gilberto Gil
Brazilian recording artist, singer, guitarist, songwriter and politician · Brazil · Musicians · Born 1942 · age 84
Gilberto Gil is read about 661 times a day, in 45 languages.
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Something wrong?He turned bossa nova into a political weapon, helped invent tropicália, got exiled by Brazil's military dictatorship for it, then came back decades later to run the country's Ministry of Culture.
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, Brazil was, is, and will be in fashion.
Like most artists and musicians, I considered myself detached from the political life…but I had an insight that maybe we would have a political contribution to make in the future.
[on the "tropicalization" of intellectual property laws] To make the digital world join in the samba…
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Gilberto Gil started playing music as a child in Brazil and cut his teeth writing bossa nova with a sharp political edge. In the 1960s he became a central architect of tropicália alongside Caetano Veloso, blending samba, rock, African rhythms, and reggae into something the military regime found dangerous enough to jail both men for nine months in 1969, then force them out of the country. Gil spent his exile in London, returned to Bahia in 1972, and kept recording - his work eventually earning Grammys for Quanta Live in 1999 and Eletracústico in 2006. From 2003 to 2008 he served as Brazil's Minister of Culture under President Lula, the activist-musician now inside the government he once challenged.
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