| Every little thing is gonna be alright |
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In April of 2004, Iain Harris travelled to Maputo to interview the Brazilian Minister of Culture. These three stories, originally published in three different magazines, were the outcome.Gilberto Gil: every little thing is gonna be alrightGilberto Gil is one of the grand masters of Brazilian music. He's also the Minister of Culture, with a social contract in President Lula's government to make real the dreams of the Brazilian people. How does a Minister of Culture achieve this?"Gilberto Gil is an artist with a conscience, an activist with a gift, he has given the world a kind of music that seeks to empower people as much as it moves them. As politician and performer, as musician and Minister of Culture, he has spoken up for human rights, social justice and environmental protection - and above all, for the movement to bring culture closer to all the people." UN Secretary-General Kofi Anan describing Gilberto Gil at the UN in New York on 19 September 2003 1. Lula and Gil. The dream In December of 2002, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva - leader of the populist Workers Party - was elected president of Brazil. It was the first time in Brazil's history that a working class president and a leftist had been elected. It was a significant and welcome return to people's politics for a country that has bounced between military regimes and elitest democracies. As his minister of Culture Lula selected Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira, a high ranking Green Party official and iconic musical hero of Brazil. "If it wasn't for musicians like Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Jorge Ben and Carlos Jobim," Lula said, "Brazil wouldn't be Brazil." Shortly after his inauguration, Gil was invited to make a presentation at the United Nations General Assembly. He took to the microphone with his guitar and his dreadlocks. And instead of making a speech, he sang. From the beginning it was clear that this was not going to be a regular minister. 2. Gilberto Gil - the letter, the message and the medium "What's wrong with the world today Things just got to get better Sho' ain't what the leaders say Maybe we should write a letter" Prince, in Dear Mr Man, from the Musicology Album In a music career of forty years, Gilberto Gil has sewn himself into the fabric of national consciousness. Gil is Brazil and Brazil is Gil. As a musician he has earned the ears and hearts of the people. In a parallel political career of some twenty years - as exile, councillor, alderman, cultural secretary in his home state of Bahia, and environmental activist - he has proven that his interests lie entirely with the upliftment of his fellow Brazilians. Brazil is split quite forcibly into two spheres: North and South. The North is the poorer sphere, mostly black descendents of Africans imported as slaves. The largest percentage of Brazil's unemployed live here. The South, extending from Sao Paolo state to the Argentine border, is the economic powerhouse, made up of mostly white descendents of Europe. At the turn of the century the South made a massive call for secession from the North because it was tired of supporting what it believed was a lazy, impoverished (read black) population. "There's been so much social upheaval in the past. Everything is governed by economics and race. There used to be three reggae bars here, scattered around Pelourinho [the epicentre of Salvador, former slave whipping post]. And because that meant a lot of black people, the authorities closed them down and kept just one. Too many black people in groups is bad for tourism they think. Pelourinho is tightly controlled, and if you're black - and most of the people here are black - that's a hugely disempowering thing. "And that's why music is so important here. Why everything is about music and infused with music. It's an outlet. It's the only way that people can release the frustrations of living here. The frustrations of a past full of inaccuracies, a present that ignores our issues and needs, and a future that is never certain." Olodum lead drummer Grande, in an interview conducted in Pelourinho, Salvador, June 2000. Olodum is Brazil's most Afro-Brazilian carnival group and percussion export, and campaigners for the rights of the poor. Gil was born in the capital of the North, Salvador da Bahia. Salvador is the political centre of working class discontent. It was the slave portal to South America, and hence the entry point for Africans to Brazil. It was from here that African culture permeated Brazil to become a central tenet of Brazilian culture - in the food, music, dance, religious practice and iconography. And it was in Bahia that both Gil's musical and political sensibilities were formed. In his music he has been writing a code of cultural and political practice that attempts to bring the world into perspective: referencing the past to inform the present and future, challenging assumed ideas on race and social equality, pairing the ancient and the modern. Bridging many worlds. As a young man pioneering the Tropicalismo movement, music was his weapon against the military regime. He was heard. And he was a threat. So he was arrested and exiled together with Caetano Veloso. Now as one of the elders in a populist working class government, as both an icon and a diplomat, culture is his weapon against poverty and inequality. He has been creating and updating an ongoing letter of discontent, that now as minister, he has the opportunity to thoroughly act upon. He might feel that President Lula should have chosen somebody more conventionally qualified for the job, but Lula chose well. Gil is both the medium and the message. As Alex Bellos said in July last year in The Observer: "Gil's position in the government personifies the arrival of the 1960s counterculture as the establishment." 3. Lula and Gil. Restoring dignity. "The arts have been the principal interpreter of our world, they give intense significance to the process of being human. The creative processes are vital for the development of our human potential, they help us to understand and affirm our social contract." Gilberto Gil Insurance company Prestasie Brokers used to offer a Lasting Dignity Plan, a policy that allowed people to die in dignity. It was a smug mockery of the real issue at hand: the majority of South Africans were being denied the right to live with dignity, let alone die with it. The most fundamental issue to be addressed, both in Brazil and South Africa, is that of "of reducing inequality and restoring dignity" says Gil. The self-esteem of nations where half the population and more are not employed - and not employable in the existing economy - can only be zero. Brazil's unemployment rate is the same as South Africa's, but with a population of 160 million, the scale is more drastic. And so Brazil's social contract, again just like ours, is to create jobs for people, empowering people to sustain themselves and their families, create the possibilities for them to grow as human beings and so inspire a healthy sense of self. What's been elusive in the ANC government is the answer to the question of where a department of Arts and Culture is supposed to fit into this contract. The cultural politics of President Lula's government, says Gil, "is part of a general project of building a new hegemony in our country, of building a nation that is truly democratic, plural and tolerant." Fred Khumalo put it nicely in ThisDay during May. "Artistic expression is a means of sharing our common humanity and forging national identity." And if art is the interpreter of our world, if art is self-actualisation and self-realisation, then the tools for need to be made as broadly accessible as possible. Art, therefore, needs to shift from the distant confines of galleries and pashmir conversations, into a popular realm. The role then of the ministry is to make it possible for Brazil's wealth of cultural voices to be heard, and in doing that to affirm and cultivate them. And it does that by creating policies that address the calls of the people. "For instance in hip hop," explains Gil smoking a cigarette and eating peanuts all at the same time. "We as a ministry have responded to the popularity of hip hop amongst the youth by creating a policy that embraces hip hop as a form of youthful expression, seeks to use it to empower the youth. To express themselves positively, in their own way. To send a message. Hip hop has become a culture and it must have its cultural space, and so we must create guidelines to ensure that it's voice is heard. We have done the same with storytelling, we have embarked upon a programme to document the stories of a diversity of cultural storytellers. To keep history alive, so that those stories can be documented for future generations. And to restore currency to this mode of culture." But for Gil, cinema is the most vital tool. 4. Gil and Lula. Making dreams realities Gil says: "The 20th century was the century of cinema. It was during this time that cinema consolidated a new fascinating form of understanding ourselves. It transformed our way of life into a planetary experience, creating new habits and customs, inventing the contemporary man. But cinema is also an economy. Apart from being a magnificent manifestation of the human spirit, it is also an economy. A modern and sophisticated economy, full of possibilities. We are find the gaps and taking them." We have been making deals with the distributors, he continues. And adds that government will note be afraid to intervene directly in the realm of distribution to ensure there is suitable distribution to take a growing number of releases to the public. We want to be producing 100 films a year by the time this government of President Lula reaches the end of its term. Producing, distributing and exhibiting our films. We are certain that, with work and reason, this is a perfectly viable possibility. "What we have to do, Brazilian people and Brazilian government, together, is to make dreams material. In a cinema that reflects the dimension of our grand cultural, territorial and economic diversity, in a form of expression that reflects and energises our consciousness of nationality and sovereignty, that presentes with real insight, for ourselves and the whole world, the way to be Brazilians." We can make dreams a reality, he says. But only by working everyday. Already in 1992 he was saying it. In the song A Dream, on the Parabolicamara album, "A nation will only go forward if we work everyday." At the time he wrote the song, inflation was at an all time high of 1500 per cent, and the president, Fernando Collor de Mello, was impeached in a major corruption scandal. The situation has stabilised since, but the work remains urgent. A quick look at the Ministry of Culture's website affirms that since the beginning of Gil's tenure, it has been all work - at a lightning pace. He is out to create a presence, appearing everywhere as the face of cultural change; touring as statesmen with the pace he is accustomed to touring as a musician. It's only been a year and a half, but already the results are visible. At the movies: sixty feature films will have been made by the end of this year, up from 30 last year. Compare that to South Africa's not even five features in the last year. Today, [the musicians] Youssou `n Dour, and Ray Lema can do much for informal diplomacy than any state department. The same goes for Ruben Blades in Central America. Gilberto Gil in The Music of the World is bigger than World Music 5. Every little thing's gonna be alright It was April in Maputo when Gilberto Gil began his set at the Espaco Artistico, under the blessing of the stars and looking through the palm trees and across the sea to Katembe Island. Just as he said `Boa Noite Maputo!' it began to rain. At the gig the night before, the producers had feared it might rain and had moved the show to Cine Africa on Avenida 24 do Julho. It did not rain. For the second night there were nonesuch fears. And so of course the rain fell. As the rain began to fall on the audience of some 2000 people, they spontaneously chanted the chorus of the Jorge Ben Jor classic, Chove Chuva. "Chove Chuva", they sang, "chove sem parar". It means (rather crassly translated) It's raining rain, raining without stop. The rain, after 10, minutes stopped. And later when he chanted Every little thing's gonna be alright, we all believed him. He has the stars on his side. Iain Harris traveled to Maputo to meet Gilberto Gil in Maputo during the 3rd reunion of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries. With thanks to Wilson Domingues and Jose Prokopiak of the Brazilian Consulate in Maputo, Inacio, Chico Antonio and Anita, Salino Mohamed, Mia Couto in Maputo, Mickey Fonseca in Cape Town, Farrel Roth, Talja and Adina Oskowitz and Akin Omotoso in Johannesburg. This story was first published in Leadership Magazine. |
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