Gilberto Gil

Gilberto Gil
Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira, better known as Gilberto Gil, is a Brazilian singer, guitarist, and songwriter, known for both his musical innovation and political commitment. From 2003 to 2008, he served as Brazil's Minister of Culture in the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Gil's musical style incorporates an eclectic range of influences, including Rock music, Brazilian genres including samba, African music, and reggae...
ProfessionWorld Music Singer
Date of Birth26 June 1942
CitySalvador, Brazil
avoid foreign presence products suffocated support
We support this very strongly. We need to do something to avoid being suffocated by the unscrupulous presence of foreign (cultural) products in our countries.
almost builder church faces hard open project tried
The builder has tried really hard to incorporate open space, ... The part of the project that faces the church is almost a park.
This isn't just my idea, or Brazil's idea,
I see the future of Brazil as the future of the planet.
strong guy jazz
Beginning in the sixties, but getting strong during the seventies and eighties, everybody was sort of Miles Davis and Chick Corea and the jazz guys on the west coast and east coast in America, and then in Switzerland and lots of groups in England and elsewhere, like here in Brazil. We were all under a heavy influence of technological gadgets and changes that we used as elements to produce and create music.
care
We should also start taking care of the future, not just the heritage.
expectations
Obama came to power with this element of raising many new hopes and expectations but he's been fought back by the system, becoming almost paralyzed in a way.
rejection peaceful together
Obama wants to stand for a peaceful, generous, encompassing approach that would bring all Americans, but not just Americans, the whole of international society, together to advance civilization towards what we all understand is necessary to advance. Because of that he's being subjected to very serious rejections from the reactionary portion of the system, which, unfortunately, is the dominant portion.
moving making-a-difference important
The United States is very important, too important in the civilizational process of the world. It's difficult to move, to make a difference in establishments like the one the US represents.
thinking culture care
Sponsors, corporate endowments, and the heritage of the big fortunes would take care of financing cultural projects when American society was homogeneous. Now it's too complex, it's a mix. Different cultures in collision. I think it starts to be necessary to have a government institution to deal with cultural affairs.
real struggle kind
Sometimes, from outside, and from America especially, where the racial tension is so intense, you tend to understand Brazil as a kind of ideal situation, but it's not. There are a lot of problems. Historically, we have been in struggle, in real struggle to protect and defend the natural leaning towards absorbing the African and the Indian heritage that our society has.
thinking understanding different
I think that the global consciousness concerning all those elements that produce tension, fractions of societies, is changing in the sense that we all tend to understand a little more the needs for harmonizing the process and integrating races and cultures and producing multiculturalism and different melting-pot situations. That affects global things, tolerating the Arab, the African, the Eastern civilizations, getting rid of this hegemonic dominance by the West. That's all comprehensive now in terms both of understanding and approaching the whole planet.
quality culture pot
We are sufficiently conscious of this dimension or quality of Brazil as a melting pot, as a culture and a nation that is being subjected to an amalgamating process. More than just a mixing process, it is an amalgamation where the fragments, the parts in collision, really interact profoundly. They become another thing after the contact.
law intellectual world
[ on the "tropicalization" of intellectual property laws ] To make the digital world join in the samba...