Gilberto Gil’s 1969 album, which like his 1968 and 1971
albums is simply entitled Gilberto Gil, is a wild mélange of psychedelic
pop, Brazilian sambas and bossa novas, guitar overload, and much more; hugely
inspired by the rock movements taking place up north in the United States and
across the pond in Britain, but delivered with a distinctly Brazilian spin. One
key difference is that the music Gil and his cohorts (Caetano Veloso, the band
Os Mutantes, Gal Costa, composer Rogério Duprat, and others) were making was
being made under a military dictatorship, and while the young musicians keyed
in on the transgressive and expansive possibilities of rock music, their
government reacted harshly to the youth movement. One might draw a parallel to
what musicians faced in the English-speaking countries, but no musicians I know
of from the era were ever forcibly sent into exile out of their home country
because of their involvement with the music scene, which happened to both Gil and
Veloso in 1969.
But back to
this record. Gilberto Gil had been an active professional musician since the
mid-60’s but began releasing solo albums with his debut in 1967. His debut is
in a much more traditional vein than what followed because in the interim
between that album and his 1968 self-titled release the Beatles released Sgt.
Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which several accounts say Gil listened
to obsessively. The 1968 album features Gil in full faux-military regalia on
the cover and couldn’t be a more explicit tribute to the Beatles, full of wild
arrangements that jump from sound to sound (usually within one song) and keep
the musical surprises coming, backed by the young band Os Mutantes and arranged
by Rogério Duprat. But on this 1969 release, he pushed the experimentalism even
further, this time with Stanley Kubrick’s landmark film 2001: A Space
Odyssey as an artistic touchstone. In what I can make out of the lyrics
without seeking online translations, I note references in two songs a row to
astronauts, a song entitled “2001” and the lead cut called “Cérebro
Eletrônico,” which translates as “electronic brain.” Note that these were all
released the same year as David Bowie’s celebrated “Space Oddity” single and
its attendant album, and were all recorded and done before Bowie’s tune had
been released. And then there’s the closing track, “Objeto Semi-Identificado,”
(English: “Purpose Semi-Identified”), Gil and his collaborators’ take on the
Beatles’ “Revolution #9,” which is wild and out there, but still settles into
musical phrases more regularly than the Brits’ track does. In fact, it’s not
unlike the 1968 album’s experimentalism taken to further extremes – still
listenable but jumping wildly all over the place.
And none of the space stuff and reckless
experimentation touches on some of the album’s most notable virtues – Gil’s
strong and sometimes slightly unhinged singing grounded in the rhythms that are
the heart of the best Brazilian music, guitarist Lanny’s fuzzed out psych
guitar work across the whole album (notable in the very first cut, but really,
it’s everywhere), and Rogério Duprat’s better-integrated arrangements that
don’t sound as much like separate ideas tacked together, but rather a way to
augment the possibilities of Gil’s finely balanced pop sensibilities that lurk
underneath that reckless experimentalism. And it also doesn’t note the album’s
hit song and finest track, “Aquele Abraço” – an irresistible samba groove that
is a love letter to Rio and an ode to joy, calling out samba schools, football
clubs, street parades, etc. It’s so buoyant, joyous, and propulsive that you’d
never know that Gil wrote the song while on house arrest awaiting exile. Or
that on this song, like most of the album, Gil wrote and laid down basic vocal
and acoustic guitar tracks at his home in Salvador, Bahia while Duprat made the
musical arrangements for the album and recorded the other instruments in Rio
and São Paulo. Back in February Gil and Veloso had been arrested by the
military government, spent three months in prison and four under house arrest,
and then were told to leave the country, living in Europe in exile until they
were allowed to return in 1971. They were given no reason or charge for their
arrest. If you think youth music can’t be a powerful force, think about
that for a bit. And next time the cops bust up your party that’s too loud,
think for a bit about how much worse off you could be.
The fact that Gil could make a
record this delightful under these conditions is remarkable, thanks in no small
part to Rogério Duprat’s sterling work in bringing its disparate ideas
together. At least six tracks are delights, with two of the others fine enough
and letting up the tension a little, and then the wild closing number of
“Objeto Semi-Identificado.” But there’s a happy ending - on return to Brazil,
Gil continued making music (obviously music that would be less offensive to the
government) and contributing greatly to the artistic culture of his home
country in spite of how he’d been treated. And from 2003 - 2008, under a new
government, Gil served as Brazil's Minister of Culture, resigning only for
health reasons after having his resignation rejected twice by the president. He
left to have a vocal cord polyp treated and to return to music, which he continues
to this day, having released four new albums since leaving his political career
behind. But his landmark work from the late-60’s into the mid-70’s remains the
cornerstone of his catalog, a catalog well worth perusing in its entirety.
- Patrick Brown
No comments:
Post a Comment