Gilberto Gil’s Festive Tribute to His Roots Rocks the House

Brazilian composer Gilberto Gil is known as an alchemist, a magician who, beginning in the ‘60s, swirled together rock, jazz and, later, reggae with facets of his homeland’s rhythmic tradition to create an entirely new musical element, the Brazilian pop genre known as tropicalia. It was this festive, electric, dance-crazy music that dominated Gil’s packed show at the House of Blues Sunday.

But there were moments during the long, wildly received performance when Gil put aside his role as innovator and instead played the role of historian, introducing the roots of his music in an unplugged acoustic session that paid tribute to such musical pioneers as Chiquinha Gonzaga, the father of the marcha style of samba.

Backed by frame drums, acoustic guitars and the resonant drone of the single-string berimbau, Gil cast an instrumental spell that provided a direct link from his thoroughly modern hybrid to the turn-of-the-century sounds of the simple two-beat samba. These quieter moments were every bit as intense and inviting as the plugged-in presentations that bracketed them, while serving to show that the forms and inspirations of 60 and more years ago were not all that different than those felt today.

Gil, a man of musical passion, worked with a dynamic intensity throughout the evening. Much of his early music was written in response to the military repression suffered in his country during the ‘60s and ‘70s, and the singer-guitarist still brings that kind of strong feeling to his presentation today.

But the overall mood here was one of carnaval. The largely Portuguese-speaking crowd, warmed by an energetic performance from opening singer Katia Moraes, began dancing, singing and chanting well before the curtains parted to reveal Gil and his five-piece ensemble.

The only tune Gil performed in English, his own “Nightengale,” gave non-Portuguese speakers insight into the imaginative poetry of his lyrics and the conviction with which he delivers them. American pop musicians who get by on rhymes and cheap appeals to emotion would do well to take notice of Gil’s intelligence and dedication to his craft.