The singer-songwriter was elected by a majority, with 21 of 34 votes, and is the second black man to join the Academy.
Rio de Janeiro (AFP) .- Gilberto Gil, a living legend of Brazilian music, became a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL) at age 79, the institution reported on Thursday.
“Gilberto Gil translates the dialogue between high culture and popular culture. Poet from a deep and cosmopolitan Brazil. Attentive to all the calls and demands of our people. We welcome them with love and joy ”, declared the president of the ABL, Marco Lucchesi, quoted in a statement.
The singer and composer was elected by a majority, with 21 out of 34 votes, and he is the second black man to join the Academy, along with the writer and professor Domício Proença Filho.
Born in Salvador, Bahia (northeast), Gil will succeed journalist Murilo Melo Filho, who died in 2020.
“Very happy to have been chosen for the 20th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Thank you all for your support and thanks to the now colleagues of the Academy for choosing me “, he wrote on his social networks Gil, who beat the poet Salgado Maranhão and the literary critic Ricardo Daunt in the vote.
Bestselling author as That hug and Express 2222, Gil released nearly 60 albums and garnered two Grammy Awards, plus five nominations.
Along with Caetano Veloso, also from Bahia, Gil is one of the exponents of “tropicalismo”, a libertarian movement that revolutionized Brazilian music in the 1960s.
Tropicalism “contemplated and internationalized music, cinema, plastic arts, theater and all Brazilian art”, and disgusted the dictatorship that commanded the country at that time, which is why both ended up in exile, said the Academy .
His time abroad “contributed to the influence of the pop world on Gil’s work, who even recorded an album in London, with songs in Portuguese and English,” he added.
The musician also served as Minister of Culture between 2003 and 2008, during the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and was named Artist for Peace (UNESCO) in 1999 and UN Ambassador for Agriculture and Food (FAO), among other international recognitions.
Last week, the renowned actress Fernanda Montenegror, nominated for an Oscar for best actress for the film Central Station (1998), he also became a member of the Academy.
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