Afropop Worldwide spoke with Gil on June 3, 1995, shortly after the release of his album "Acoustic."

AFROPOP WORLDWIDE: How did the idea of doing an acoustic act come about?

GILBERTO GIL: The people in my record company gave me the idea of doing something acoustic. The idea that they had was to do something solo. And then I told them I would like to do it, but I would like to stretch the idea and have a band with me. Then I told them to approach MTV and see if they would like to have that as a project in their "Unplugged" acoustic series. I was actually the second to do it. I think Joao Bosco had done one. So they got together with MTV and the whole thing was sorted out and we did the record.

A.W: There are many older songs here. Are some of them new also?

G.G.: The only new recording of a song by me is "A Novidade." That's a song that already existed but it's the first time I recorded it. It was recorded before by the group Paralamos. The Stevie Wonder song ["Secret Life of Plants"] was also done especially for this record.

A.W: How did this record do in Brazil?

G.G.: It did very well. It sold over 300,000 here, which is very good for someone of my stature. It was a hit.

A.W: It's amazing the way you've managed to stay at the center of things for so long.

G.G.: It's an achievement, but it's quite common as well. It happens often, not only in Brazil. In Brazil, historically, we've been finding it more difficult to maintain and stabilize a career. But it's been happening lately, after we achieved the concept of being a new society and being industrial and modern and competitive. We've become more able to find space for the older together with the newcomers. For instance, a BB King or a Frank Sinatra or a Ray Charles in America. That's the point we are approaching now in Brazil, people like me, Milton Nascimento, Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque, Maria Bethania, Gal Costa. We all belong to a generation that had a good job and that's recognized by the society, so we have our space guaranteed.

A.W: Do you prefer playing electric or acousic in a show?

G.G.: Playing unplugged is not new. The label is new. That's the marketing side of it. But the artists, most of them, have always included the acoustic dimension in their works. I like playing acoustic. It's easier. It's more comfortable. The energy is simple and concentrated. It's also sort of familiar. It goes to the beginnings, the roots. It makes the whole thing sort of intimate, like being at home.

A.W: You did acoustic shows with Caetano as well, didn't you.

G.G.: Yes. Now that was radical, because it was just the two of us with our voices and guitars.

A.W: Let's go back to this idea about how Brazil's music scene has evolved during your career.

G.G.: The changes were nothing but consequences of the whole investment, industrial and cultural and commercial, and artistic, that all the generations have made over the past 30 years in Brazil, sort of adapting, updating, and recycling constantly, pushing and stretching forward. It's a process of always including different concepts and creating space for up-comers, especially people from the streets, from the poorer areas. The industrialization of this process goes back 30 years. The changes are just consequences of this. I see them very naturally, and future prospects will also be consequences of this installed capacity that we have today.

We uncovered tradition, we paid tribute to our masters, we celebrated the new revelation of bossa nova and allowed ourselves to be shaken by the whirlwind of rock `n' roll. We believed that the future was to live in the present. This is the challenge of modernity, the challenge put to anybody who lives in his own time. I feel very natural in being at the same time in Bahia in Brazil and on the planet. I've always felt that way.

A.W: Are you hearing any especially new music in this time?

G.G.: Nothing in particular that I would say this is a train that I am going to follow. All I would like to do now is to be able to use the fragments of anything that is interesting, but with that attitude of considering everything as fragments of all, of the one. One in all. So I'm prepared to go on using all the local elements from traditional Brazilian music, the elements from the local Bahian and Northeaster, and other regions of Brazil, and of course the international elements, from black music from Africa, the Caribbean, North America, as well as classical music, experimental, and avant garde music. That's the mixture that always characterizes pop music. I'm pop, and I will be pop. I'm comfortable. Stevie Wonder is always fresh and surprising. He always brings some enchanting elements. So listening to his newest record was good. This is the newest thing I've been listening to.

A.W: What about Chico Science and Naçao Zumbi?

G.G.: I love them. They are new. They are bold. They are vanguards. They're wild, and sufficiently strong and very challenging. They're not just doing it for fun in the simplifying sense of the word. I mean, they have fun, but they also have a sense of responsibility. They are engaged.

A.W: Like them, you drew early on from Brazilian African tradition. For you, I believe it was the Afro blocos . Talk a little about that.

G.G: That happened in the `70s. I grew up with the carnival, the groups that anticipated the new format for carnival and street music in Bahia. So I followed them. I was always sort of close to the thing, and in the `70s, with this concept of mixing everything into the pop combination, I decided to add elements from afoxe and Afro blocos into my music. And I recorded this first song talking about Ile Aiye and Filos de Gandhi, and I did collaborations with those groups. I recorded with Ile Aiye and Olodum and Filos de Gandhi. I produced the first album for Ile Aiye.

A.W: Afropop visited Salvador recently, and I have to tell you, we were very impressed. G.G: It's a great source of self-pride. Bahian society speaks for itself--the whole attitude, the desires, the organization of social community development, music, education and theater, politics. Everything!

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