Political prisoner, exiled psych-rock idol, reggae pioneer, cabinet minister, reality TV star … the English-speaking world really doesn’t have an equivalent of the Brazilian polymath Gilberto Gil. Aged 81, he has declared that this show is his “farewell to London”, a place he’s played regularly, and where he lived, in political exile, between 1969 and 1972. Where Gil’s London dates in July 2022 were in the run-up to a fraught Brazilian election, tonight the mood is much more celebratory, with a four-piece band comprising two of his children and two grandchildren.
Such is the breadth of his canon over the last 60 years that Gil only repeats six songs from last year. The Brazilian expats who make up most of the audience go mad for his take on reggae, a genre Gil was introduced to in early 70s London, “eating Jamaican food at the Mangrove”. He enjoys mangling it with Brazilian music – he skanks through The Girl From Ipanema with his granddaughter Flor in the Astrud Gilberto role, plays a bossa version of No Woman No Cry, while Esoterico, a ballad he wrote for Gal Costa in 1976, is interpolated with Bob Marley’s Jamming.
For the purists, the first half sees him seated, playing bossa nova on a nylon string classical guitar, with stripped back versions of early sambas such as Expresso 2222, Viramundo and a lovely version of Edu Lobo’s Upa Neguinho, all featuring Gil’s audaciously jazzy chords. Gil tells us he wrote the exquisite, lovesick Ladeira da Preguiça in Hampton Court in 1971, and transforms his 1984 synth pop anthem Tempo Rei into a spartan samba, with 4,000 Brazilians yelling the chorus. He also touches on tropicália – a funky version of 1969’s Cérebro Eletrônico; a hypnotic, motorik version of 1972’s Back to Bahia.
But it’s the hits that get the crowd on their feet. His 1981 disco belter Palco is turned into singalong folk-funk, with a nifty, Steely Dan-style guitar solo from his son Bem; 1982’s Andar Com Fé mutates into South African jit-jive, while 1969’s pop art samba anthem, Aquele Abraço, even gets him daintily hopping across the stage, like James Brown. This octogenarian still looks as if he has many more shows in him.