Gils, Jobims, Buarques, Velosos ... The succession in the majestic family of Brazilian music

The singer Maria Luiza Jobim, in childhood, between João Gilberto and his father, Tom Jobim.

Bottom left, playing with her father at home.

On the right, an image from her first solo album, 'Casa branca'. Pessoal archive

Maria, Francisco, José, Isabel, João, Maíra, Martim, Heloísa.

Traditional names in so many Brazilian families that, in exceptional cases, carry the DNA of bossa nova, samba, rock'n'roll, Brazilian music in all its aspects.

They grew up surrounded by musical instruments and ran around behind the scenes before learning to read and write.

They are heirs to other names that built and are building the cultural identity of a country and that, today, endow the history of Brazilian popular music (MPB) with its own musicality.

“The new Brazilian popular music has touches of the pop universe, which our generation brings.

And our contribution to pop is precisely to rescue traditional elements ”, says José Gil, 29, son of Gilberto Gil, famous worldwide for his elementary music to recognize the rhythm of Brazilian music.

Together with João Gil, 27, and Francisco Gil, 25, grandsons of the

, he forms the Gilsons trio, which revisits the Afro-Brazilian sound in percussion, trumpet and guitar.

Although José is officially the uncle of the other two, the small difference in age has made them grow up as brothers and discover music together.

The image on the cover of the first EP,

(re-recording of a hit by the band Olodum), is precisely an image of the three, as children, playing toy instruments in the living room.

"The band is, in a way, a continuation of this family coexistence," says Francisco Gil, son of Preta Gil, singer and cultural producer.

The summers and carnivals lived in Bahia generated not only memories, but also a deep reverence for the Afro troupes, present in a repertoire that goes from

to chotis, passing through

.

On September 12, the Gilsons took the stage for the first time with their father and grandfather.

They were the main attraction of the Coala Festival, which, due to the pandemic, was held virtually.

They presented their entire repertoire and Gilberto Gil played the guitar on all the songs.

The interaction of the family throughout the concert made it clear that Gil is indeed an influence on the group.

“We have no way to escape, it is one of the greatest musical forces of the 20th and 21st centuries.

There are not many artists who have achieved what he and Caetano [Veloso] have achieved: a 50-year career publishing records, in each era with their own aesthetics and experience ”, says João, son of singer Nara Gil, the eldest daughter by Gil.

Precisely because their parents' generation has already carried on their grandfather's musical lineage, the Gilsons are not afraid of being labeled "grandchildren or children of."

The name of the group, devised by Preta Gil, makes it clear.

Although they recognize that more than being a burden for comparisons, the surname opens doors for them in an industry in which few are financially successful.

“It is a privilege, of course.

We are more familiar with the way things work, the recording process, how a concert is done ... Growing up in this environment, we meet a lot of people, from technicians to producers ”, says João.

Despite their illustrious surname and having their doors open, all three say that no one encouraged them to pursue a musical career.

“The great merit was having an instrument at hand.

There was never this 'ah, you have to play' thing, but there were always guitars and drums at my grandfather's house, so we played, ”recalls João.

“We used to do it secretly, we stole guitars, we burned the amps,” José laughs.

In these “home band” rehearsals, Caetano Veloso's children —Moreno, Tom and Zeca— were present many times, with whom they grew up, given the decades-long friendship between the two musicians from La Tropicalia.

EL PAÍS tried to interview the three of them, who were on tour with Caetano presenting the album

, but the family's press office reported that they did not want to speak.

Currently, the Gilsons edit some of their songs in Gilberto's office, who, despite having many decades of experience, learns new techniques with his offspring.

"As our generation is more intimate with the new musical languages ​​that have emerged with technology, we pass them on," says José.

The trio say that their father and grandfather are usually "loving" when commenting on their compositions, although they don't ask him much.

They prefer to show the end result.

“He's not a guy who likes everything and that's why it's not good to show him before, because we believe a lot in our sound.

Sometimes their comments are not very good, but we keep going, ”adds José.

As the Gil family well demonstrates, some surnames seem to bless the fate - at least professionally - of those who bear them.

In the case of Bebel Gilberto, daughter of João Gilberto, one of the founders of bossa nova, and of the singer Miúcha, it seemed almost inevitable.

“Her music has always influenced me a lot.

I listened to his guitar so much when I was little, that I acquired an incalculable harmonic notion, "says the 54-year-old singer, who has just released the album

, four decades after having debuted with her father singing

and 20 years later of the debut album

, which sold millions of copies in the United States.

João Gilberto was known for his obsession to achieve perfection when he sang and played.

Bebel says that his father's musical desire sometimes bothered him.

She insisted on playing Di Giorgio guitar even when her daughter just wanted to talk.

And then I would listen.

Today I understand the importance of having kept quiet and listened.

Somehow, I managed to mark an aesthetic and a special sound, something that you hear and is unmistakable, just like he did ”, he says.

The new work, which brings the electronic bossa that characterizes him, marks his return to Rio after living 27 years in New York and is a declaration of love for João Gilberto.

Na outra metade da vida

[In the other half of life]

Você soube, fez tudo

[You knew it and did everything]

More nessa metade

[But in this half]

You will have to tempt you to teach (...)

[I'll have to teach you (...)]

O que não foi dito

[What was not said]

Já estava written

[It was already written]

Deixa eu take care of you

[Let me take care of you]

“I made that song for him because he wanted to talk and couldn't find a way to do it,” says Bebel about the lyrics to

.

In 2018, he asked that João Gilberto's assets and copyrights be blocked, because he was not in a position to manage them.

"The repercussion in the press was as if he did it with bad intentions, despite the fact that we always had a very close and trusting relationship," laments the singer, who lost her mother in December 2018 and her father in July 2019 In

, he exorcises his pain with songs of hopeful tone and sings the love for his legacy and for Brazilian music.

The music was already there

If João Gilberto is known as the inventor of the bossa nova rhythm, Tom Jobim is considered its great composer and teacher.

And the one who carries his legacy in music is also a woman: Maria Luiza Jobim, 33 years old.

After working as an architect and studying Philology, she accepted that her destiny was really music.

As electronic music has always been for her, she has built a sound of her own very different from that of her father.

Between 2013 and 2017, she formed the duo Opala with the musician Lucas Paiva, with a repertoire of electronic indie-pop sung in English.

Maria Luiza is bilingual and her first songs were born in English.

The Portuguese has only appeared now, in

, his first solo work, which collects memories of a childhood lived with his parents in a house in the Jardim Botânico neighborhood, in Rio de Janeiro.

They are many.

One is that she stayed under the piano while Tom rehearsed with her band, basically made up of the family and Danilo Caymmi, Maria Luiza's godfather.

"Dorival Caymmi would go home and sing with my father and I was fascinated by his timbre ... These are things that I will always carry with me and that will undoubtedly always be in my music," she says.

Besides Maria Luiza, her older brother, Paulo Jobim, and her nephew, the pianist Daniel Jobim, Paulo's son, are also musicians.

Bearing one of the biggest names in the MPB is both a privilege and a responsibility.

“It is part of my legacy.

The music was there, and I was born.

I got to that room and I had the privilege of seeing those meetings up close and, as much as I didn't understand it, I felt and was imbued with all that.

Part of what she absorbed is revealed in her writing process, which Maria Luiza describes as intuitive.

"Sometimes it starts with a single word, an idea, a feeling ...", she says, who is quarantined in a house in the interior of the State of Rio de Janeiro.

As she had to postpone the tour to present the album due to the pandemic, she does performances on social networks - even in the daily live shows of the Brazilian singer Teresa Cristina - and does not stop composing.

“I have been making a lot of music from a distance, with colleagues.

I think I'm going to come out of quarantine with a new album ”, he laughs.

Growing up in a musical house was also decisive for Tim Bernardes, 29, to follow his vocation and become, according to critics, one of the names of "the renewal of the MPB."

Son of the singer and composer Maurício Pereira, who marked the music of the eighties in Brazil with the group Os mulheres negra, Tim pronounced “music” before any other word when he was little, as shown by a family video.

At the age of six, he was already playing some instruments.

At 17, he began to compose.

Later, he studied Music (“I'm a

”, he says) and perfected his natural talent, praised by Caetano Veloso: “his tuning is wonderful, his control of the dynamics, his refinement, his instrumental performance and his freedom when it comes to playing. to use the stage and the light with elegance ”.

Vocalist for the band O Terno, Tim also released, in 2017, the solo album

, acclaimed for singing pain in the form of beautiful songs.

On this album, he plays all the instruments, did all the arrangements and also the production.

His style has already been described as “Brazilian indie-hippie-retro”, a joke he made in one of the lyrics, as an ironic portrait of his own generation.

“Tropicalismo mixed Brazilian culture with what was happening in the world, like

of the Beatles.

I drink from Caetano, Gil, Clube da Esquina, but also from Tame Impala, Mac DeMarco ... I don't see it exactly as a renewal of the MPB, but as a continuation, an experimentation ”, he explains.

Nothing different from the style of his father, Tim summarized as "something very own, the

", even though the

two have worked together: Maurício composed five of the themes of the album debut of the band O Terno.

“It never seemed to me that something of his continued, his sound is much more from the 80s and 90s. The music that I have listened to is different from what he listened to.

Maybe that's why it was so nice working with him, ”says Tim.

However, the example of his father's career also brought him some insecurities.

The biggest was the fear of not being able to live off music.

When Tim was still a child, in the 90s, Mauricio left the band Os mulheres negra to experiment and innovate without strings attached.

"It was very difficult to make independent music at that time and I realized that money was really a problem at home. So, when he felt the vocation to study music, he thought about studying something else and leaving art as plan B. But His parents encouraged him. Just over 10 years after his father sacrificed himself to live as an independent musician, Tim Bernardes and his fellow O Terno co-workers, thanks to the digital revolution, manage to make arrangements and recordings at home with ease. . “I have the facility to imagine and visualize the final product, be it a video, a photo, a clip, a song, the melody, the timbre ... I like the complete product, so I like to imagine the result. end and, from there, investigate and understand how I can get there ”, says the“

music

”.

Different directions

Having grown up in a musical family determined the footsteps of all these heirs to Brazilian music, but the paths that the pianist and singer Maíra Freitas took turned out to be more sinuous.

Despite having grown up in Rio de Janeiro among samba players, from a very young age she decided to take different paths from those of her father, the veteran Martinho da Vila, and her sister, Mart'nália.

Vila, today at 82, has been a samba landmark in Brazil since the 1970s. Mart'nália followed in her father's footsteps.

Maíra, despite growing up surrounded by the best-known rhythm in Brazil, at the age of seven she wanted to learn to play the piano.

She began playing Mozart and Chopin and pretended "to be a classical pianist in her early 20s".

Her family was slow to believe in her calling.

“Others also took piano lessons, but nobody took it seriously.

I insisted that they give me a piano and I didn't get it until I was 11 years old ”.

As samba was always present in his life, in addition to so many other styles, he began to mix his classical training with popular music.

Today his piano is mixed with the drumming of the dull drum and the tambourine.

"For me, improvising was horrible, I wanted to read the score ...", he says.

“But my theoretical training gave me a great technical base.

My records have a strong vein of Rio music, but they also have electronic music, pop, a lot of jazz, a bit of classical piano ... I think I'm a great crazy mix of things, "he adds.

Maíra has already released two albums, the last one in 2015, and she does concerts and tours, even with her sister and her father.

She says that Martinho da Vila influences her more spiritually, “guiding us”, than directly.

“And I learn a lot by following him as a musician, seeing the great ways he has to treat the audience and direct the show.

Although she has no theoretical training, she has a lot of experience and knows what she wants, ”she says.

But Maíra does not live only on concerts and records.

At home, he makes productions, composes themes for series and films, and teaches piano.

“The Internet has given my generation access to everything.

I can learn a West African song and put it together with other genres and this MPB base that is so rich.

You have Milton [Nascimento], Caetano, my father, Gil, Djavan ... Brazilian music is wonderful, it is diverse and strong and eclectic and rhythmic and harmonic.

And this new generation comes from this and now they can do whatever they want, without the obligation of having to do this or that ”.

She combines this artistic and creative desire with the care of her daughters, one two years old and the other four months old.

She has done concerts while pregnant, some with her father, and on many occasions she has to work at home with her girls on her lap.

Remember that some people doubted or questioned their ability to keep a concert schedule and continue working after becoming a mother.

But prejudice is nothing new.

“At 10 years old I heard that I should play the drum, not the piano.

Those who play the piano are usually the daughters of the rich women, dressed in pink and with stockings, and I have always been quirky, atypical, I wore colorful clothes, braids ... black woman can study music and do something more elaborate.

“Today I am the mirror where some people look at themselves.

I receive messages from black women who follow me, they see that they can also do it and they start to study piano ... That makes me happy ”, he explains.

She believes her responsibilities go beyond music.

“My father used to sing

[whoever has a pretty wife]

[who garments her with a chain].

Let him keep playing it, but I have other responsibilities.

And I don't want to do anything stupid. "

Son of melody, grandson of poetry

In the genetic lottery of Brazilian music, some have the privilege of belonging to two strong lineages.

This is the case of the singer and songwriter Chico Brown, who inherited from his grandfather, Chico Buarque, the name and the poetry of love and heartbreak in the lyrics.

From his father, Carlinhos Brown, he brings the melody, rhythm and timbre of the music of Bahia.

At 24 years old, Chico - who is also the nephew of Bebel Gilberto (her mother, Silvia Buarque, is the singer's cousin) - came slowly to the music industry, but started well: "I'm going to sing the song now This is how Chico Buarque introduced, in the concerts of his most recent tour (

), the song

, an instrumental composition by his grandson to which he put lyrics.

The melody came to Chico Brown in a dream, "as a gift from some supernatural force," he says, with a mixture of Rio and Bahia accents.

The collaboration with his grandfather works like this: the grandson sends the melody by email and receives the lyrics (usually a long time later) also by email.

He began to compose in adolescence, first on the piano and later on the guitar.

“Music has always been present, as a cure, a stimulus.

That's why I've always had bands and I've made songs, ever since I went to school, even to present work in class, ”he says.

His repertoire, which he began to present last year in concerts throughout Brazil, can be considered a mix of Bahian guitar with jazz fusion: it combines signature compositions - influenced by the MPB - with other Latin American rhythms, oriental elements, rock and classical music. .

"I always listen to everything and mix what is already traditional with things that instigate me musically, things that allow me, through music, to cross the boundaries of space and time," he says.

When he composes on the guitar, Chico tends to go towards poetry, rhythm, swagger.

On the piano, he goes classical.

“I do more waltzes, with a few more, let's say,

.

On the guitar, I am more Moraes Moreira, tropical, songbook, with references to samba and jazz ”.

The works of his father and grandfather do not have a direct influence on his creation, although he is inspired by the professional position of both, in how they behave on stage.

Sometimes he looks to his grandfather's poetry as inspiration for a protest song, or his father's rhythmic side for a percussive meter.

"It has already happened to me that some friends listen to my songs and say, without my expecting it, that they sound like songs from one or the other," he admits.

But the responsibility of belonging to that musical lineage comes more from the expectation of others, he says.

When you create, you don't think about whether your song will satisfy the taste of another generation of audiences.

"Because their work spans decades, I cannot pretend to compare myself to them," says the young musician, who nevertheless intends to surprise those who tend to underestimate or overvalue his work just because of his last name.

As his grandfather and namesake sing in the song

, the offspring have been in the gap for many years — since they were born — and, luckily or by chance, they are legitimate Brazilian artists.

Credits:

Report: Joana Oliveira and Felipe Betim

Layout and design: Alfredo García Ortiz

Images and videos: Personal archive of the artists and dissemination