There is no sense of guilt in jumping, singing, rejoicing, while “outside” some despicable nephew of Adenoid Hynkel, legitimized by a pseudo-democratic vote or by salvific assumptions, orders genocides, state assassinations, prevarications, and offenses to human dignity, playing war video games with real weapons, and thereby contributing to the weakening of our daily lives. And why should there be guilt, when on stage under which young and old Italians, Brazilians, and others crowd, appears a young man of almost 84 years, smiling, lean as a breadstick, who with his guitar begins to intone a melody, accompanied by a representation of his great family, his sons Bem and José and grandson João on instruments.
Preceded with simplicity by the Siracusan singer-songwriter Marco Castello, Gilberto Gil immediately warms up the atmosphere with the gentle groove of Expresso 2222. Everyone stands in a packed Alcatraz – Milan and Rome, two days earlier, the only Italian dates of the tour – responding in unison: “dois-dois-dois-dois”! Little by little but without overdoing it, people dance, sing, drink, and in the end, forced onto the dance floor, beer is poured on the floor. Signs with declarations of love for the artist are displayed, flags of both teams from his city, Salvador de Bahia, are raised, while he dedicates a song to fellow citizen Dida, former goalkeeper of the Seleção and one of the two city teams, comfortably seated on the main floor of the Milanese venue.
The great melodies, immediately recognizable, unfold one after another: Viramundo, the restless wanderer who in his “Axe” sway wants to turn everything into “party, work, and bread”; Estrela which sounds like a lullaby; the tautological Samba-recipe of Chiclete com banana; the relaxed and slightly reggae Upa neguinho with a duet with “netinha” Flor, with her “green” voice, like the immature Tommy mangas from the “Feira di São Joaquim” still to ripen in the basket; the political denunciation hidden in the irony of Ladeira da preguiça, the lazy climb of Salvador’s slave-shame; commitment and denunciation also in Touche pas à mon pote, a contribution to SOS Racism.
Singing and arrangements summarize different styles in an original culinary fusion: Reggae, R&B, and Afro Jazz, with a substantial musical feijoada at the base: Samba, Bajão, Northeast Forró, Rio Pagode, Sertaneja music, and more. When the lyrics and music are not his, Gilberto quotes the authors: Dorival Caymmi, master and compatriot; Edu Lobo and Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, the latter a Milanese-born Paulistano; Vinicius and Jobim, great officiants of Bossa Nova. As a sly leader, he composes a very tropical responsorial chant with the audience. He recounts his London exile, in words and in the music of Tempo Rei (here with Bento, another grandson, to whom he yields the guitar) and Aquele abraço. In Babá Alapalá and Andar com fé, he delves into the religious syncretism of Candomblé.
The program lightly strings together themes, not least that of Brazilian feminine beauty, the carioca in Garota de Ipanema (again in duet and a refined final canon with his granddaughter Flor), and the land of origin in Toda Menina Baiana in the final encore gifted to an increasingly involved audience.
In short, an intimate celebration, involving many, excluding none. Because Gilberto Gil’s music, his way of embracing the audience, are the antithesis of exclusion. The old Gil, with his young tribe, tells you a lot, enthuses you. He prolongs the “resaca” of Brazilian saudade, the one that colors the Padanian “lump in the throat” with soft languor. He teaches you to be political but not arrogant – he had even been Minister of Culture for some time in the first Lula government – in a marvelous and difficult land, to which ours increasingly resembles, for the worse, without, however, learning how much “do bem” that land could give us. A land in whose dictionary the word “remigration” does not exist, in whose name beautiful “homecomings” are pretended to be organized.
This is why all those young and old, Italians and Brazilians, sons and fathers, daughters and mothers, a small apotheosis of domestic “miscigenação” (now that’s a word from the Brazilian dictionary!), feel no guilt while daily horrors are perpetrated “outside.” Those feelings of guilt, at least for one evening, did not have the courage to cross the threshold of Alcatraz.
Because sometimes it is right to jump and sing carefree, to rejoice and spill beer on the floor. And to try to learn from certain “old ones” the wisdom of living. “A prescindere” (regardless), as Totò would have said, who, just like the author of The Great Dictator, that initial Hynkel, understood wisdom.
