Gal Costa and Romero Lubambo will be performing at 7 pm at the Hill Auditorium on Saturday Nov 7 at 8 pm. She's already made it into town -- I went today to hear her being interviewed today at UM's Clements Library, by a couple of UM professors.
At the interview, Gal Costa talked about her almost 40-years-long collaboration with the musicians Maria Bethania, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso. (I have written elsewhere about Gilberto Gil's concert in Ann Arbor last year.) The four of them constituted the Tropicalia movement in the 1960s and 197os Brazil. When a right-wing military dictatorship took power in Brazil, the Tropicalia movement was persecuted by the military junta. Not because the four of them were overtly political, but because, with their openness and experimentalism, the four artists musically represented a spirit of a challenge to authority, which made them automatically suspect.
Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso had to leave the country and go into exile in London. Gal Costa, however, was able to stay in Brazil, where she continued to sing songs that Gil and Veloso were writing in Brazil. I learned, however, at the interview that one of Gal Costa's albums, nevertheless, was banned by the dictatorship. This was her album "India", which is shown below:
One of my favorite songs sung by Gal Costa is "London, London", written by Caetano Veloso (from the period when he was in exile in London). You can see here a video of Gal Costa singing this song.
By: Sayan Bhattacharyya
UMS Student Committee Member
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