GilbertoGil
Stockholm, May 2005
The 14th Polar Music Prize Ceremony was held at Konserthuset, Stockholm) in the month of May. The evening continued with a banquet in Vinterträdgården at Stockholm’s Grand Hôtel.
HM King Carl XVI Gustaf presented the Prize to the two Laureates Gilberto Gil and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
The citation for Gilberto Gil was read by world famous artist Jimmy Cliff, and the citation for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was read by Swedish opera singer Håkan Hagegård.
Special arrangements of the Laureates’ music was performed by Kungliga Filharmonikerna and conductor Alan Gilbert together with an amazing line up of international and Swedish artists honoured the Laureates by performing their music both at the ceremony and banquet.
The event was broadcast live on Swedish national television (TV4).
Jimmy Cliff reads the citation at the cermony.
Lisa Nilsson, Håkan Hellström & Simone Moreno - "Mas que nada"
Håkan Hellström - "Vamos Fugir"
Bahia
Gilberto Gil was born in 1942 in Salvador, Bahia, one of the most traditional and original centers of music creation and production in Brazil and the world.
Two musicians left their special mark on his formation: Luiz Gonzaga, the creator of the baião, an urban genre originating in the Northeast hinterland of Brazil, and João Gilberto, from Bahia, the inventor of the style of singing and guitar playing known worldwide as bossa nova.
João Gilberto (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
The works of Joao Gilberto and Luiz Gonzaga.
Inspiration from the whole world
Influenced by bossa nova, samba and pop, Gil forged a music with its own light wherein he incorporated rock, reggae, funk and rhythms from Bahia like afoxé. Over these musical bases, Gil has tackled a wide variety of issues in his lyrics, pertinent always to the reality of the modern man in Brazil and in the world. From counterculture to African and oriental culture; from behavioural freedom to social inequality; from prejudice to racial miscegenation; from religious syncretism to scientific advance; from technology to ecology; from love to friendship.
Salvador, Bahiao (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Albums 1967 - 1979
Tropicalia
The importance of Gilberto Gil's name to the culture of his country goes back to the '60s and the Tropicalism movement. At the time Gil and his friend, Caetano Veloso, also a singer and composer from Bahia, created Tropicalism, the principal musical movement after bossa nova.
The idea of "antropofagia" was originally put forth by poet Oswald de Andrade in his essay "Manifesto Antropófago," published in 1928, and was developed further by the tropicalistas in the 1960s.
Oswald de Andrade (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Political activism
The tropicalists assimilated elements from the international music and pop culture to the national genres and to the harmonic conquests of the bossa nova. A dominant principle of Tropicália was antropofagia, a type of cultural cannibalism that encouraged the conflation of disparate influences, out of which could be created something unique.
Deeply critical on political, moral and behavioural levels, Tropicalism ended up being repressed by the authoritarian regime then governing Brazil. Gil and Caetano were imprisoned and then exiled.
Three of the four w-horn portable enclosures for ambulant loudspeakers designed for Os Mutantes, 1970. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
To London and back
During the two years he spent in London, Gil recorded an album in English for Famous Music, a label of Paramount Records. Upon returning to Brazil in 1972, he set about recording Expresso 2222, an album on which he went back to the origins of Brazilian music under the influence of pop. It was the start of a series of records that became anthological in the '70s. Two of them registered historical encounters.
The first in 1975 was shared with another great singer-composer-guitar-player, Jorge Ben Jor. And the second in 1976, with Caetano and the singers Gal Costa and Maria Bethânia, the group from Bahia that met up to form Os Doces Bárbaros (The Sweet Barbarians).
Maria Bethânia in 1972. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Expresso 2222
Gil, the man from Bahia
The '90s were marked by several successful albums and the Quanta live concerts that gave him a Grammy Award for Best Album of World Music in 1997. In 2000 Gil released two albums which were significant to his career. The first, Gilberto Gil e as canções de ‘Eu, Tu, Eles’, featuring the great classics of Luiz Gonzaga.
Eu,Tu, Eles was also recorded live and released as São Joao Vivo. The concert was a great success, and Gil decided to link the tribute to Luiz Gonzaga to another hero he had dreamed of honouring a long time: Bob Marley. In 2002 Gil released Kaya N’Gandaya. His main idols Luiz Gonzaga, the Cangaceiro, and Marley, the Rastaman, are there together and reborn in just one character: Gil, the man from Bahia.
Politics
In 1987, as Cultural Secretary of the city of Salvador, Gilberto Gil struggled for the preservation of the city’s historical patrimony. During his mandate as city councilman from 1988 to 1992, he created the Onda Azul Foundation, an NGO of which he is the President and which develops social environmental projects aiming at a better quality of life and making people environmentally conscious.
During President Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s administration, Gilberto Gil participated in Comunidade Solidária, a governmental social program. In 2002 he openly supported the president to be of Brazil, Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva, of the Labour party. After Lula's election in December in 2002, he appointed Gil as Brazil’s new Minister of Culture.
Advertisement for Ond Azul Fundacion.
Seminário Internacional sobre Diversidade Cultural: Práticas e Perspectivas, 2007 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Content of biography is presented here as it was published in 2012.
All pictures from the ceremony and the banquet by © Polar Music Prize.
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Marie Ledin
Managing Director
marie.ledin@polarmusicprize.org
Alfons Karabuda
Chairman of the Polar Music
Prize Award Committee
alfons@polarmusicprize.org
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