The Isle of Wight Festival, created in 1968, reached its peak in 1970, when nearly 600,000 spectators gathered on this piece of land in the south of the United Kingdom. Fifty years later, Europe 1 looks back on the various concerts given for what was, one year after Woodstock, one of the last great hippie meetings. This Wednesday, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, two Brazilian musicians exiled in Europe because of the dictatorship, who are invited on stage by a happy coincidence.
From wild jam to the Isle of Wight scene
Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gilare two Brazilian stars, almost unknown outside their country, who were driven out by the military dictatorship and took refuge in London. The duo arrived on the Isle of Wight as a simple music lover, anonymous in a crowd of over 500,000 spectators. They are therefore not on the bill.
Festival-goers can still hear the two musicians "jamming", it is to improvise in the wild camps which border the places. The story goes that it was Miles Davis' Brazilian percussionist who recognized them and brought them up on stage. Rikki Farr, the organizer, introduces them in these words: “I don't know these good guys who come from Brazil. I am told that there they cannot express themselves. The only thing I can guarantee them, it is that here they can. "
The improvised concert lasts about half an hour. Festival-goers are under the spell. Very little remains of their performance, barely a few seconds of images and sound: we see a large Brazilian flag spread out on the stage, a dozen dancers in strange red latex suits and we hear the unequivocal title "Shoot Me Dead", kill me. Rumor has it that they will end the concert completely naked. They thus become the two unlikely stars of this second day of music. However, the two men do not have the heart to the party. For a year, they have been living a life of exile in Europe.
The search for a third way between the Brazilian left and the military regime
To understand what happened, you have to go back to Brazil, to Salvador de Bahia, in the northeast of the country, on the Atlantic coast, in 1963. Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil meet there, in university. Both are from the middle class. Veloso is a poet, a brilliant nonconformist. Gil, a gifted musician. They made their first recordings with Caetano Veloso's sister, renamed Maria Bethania, named after a local waltz. They also play with another future big star, Gal Costa, who will also be present on the Isle of Wight stage.
The group was a great success, then life separated them temporarily: direction Rio for Caetano and Maria, San Paolo for Gilberto. Their political ideas remain the same, iconoclastic. They denounce the military regime after the coup d'état of 1964 and the domination of the United States over Latin America. Indeed, Marshal Castelo Branco's coup d'état was carried out with Washington's agreement. At the same time, the two musicians reject cultural nationalism and the withdrawal into oneself advocated by the Brazilian left.
The two men are looking for a third way. They want to open the windows of this immense but stifling country. They multiply the provocations on stage and in their texts and are more and more popular. In July 1968, with several musician friends including Tom Ze, Nara Leao and the extravagant group Os Mutantes, they released their manifesto album, Tropicalia . It is an ode to a modern Brazil, uninhibited, proud of its culture, its youth and its crossbreeding. The opening track is called "Miserere Nobis", "Have mercy on us" in Latin Christian prayers. It is a clear allusion to the country's political situation and a visionary title.
Forced into exile by the military junta
Armed, so to speak, of this political and musical program which wants to reconcile rock and bossa nova, Brazilian folklore and the avant-garde, Gil and Veloso spread "tropicalism" throughout the country. A diffusion allowed in particular thanks to television, in a country which adores the contests of songs.
During a concert, Caetano deploys a banner in the form of a tribute to a bandit killed by the police. “Be marginal, be heroes,” it is written under a picture of the dead man. This is too much provocation. On December 13, 1968, the military junta published Decree AI-5, which drastically limited civil liberties and established artistic censorship. Two weeks later, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil are arrested, imprisoned and assaulted for "anti-government activity".
The two men will spend two months behind bars. Gil discovers oriental philosophies and becomes a vegetarian. Veloso, for his part, transforms his incarceration into introspection. The regime is wary of their popularity and sends them home under house arrest with this message: leave the country as soon as possible. It was done in September 1969, after two heartbreaking farewell concerts that they managed to organize in Salvador de Bahia to pay for their plane tickets and part of their exile expenses. They spend in Lisbon, in Paris, in a hotel in the Latin Quarter and finally arrive in London. Their wives, children and manager are on the trip.
In London, two different destinies ...
Gil, Veloso and their wives, two sisters named Andrea and Sandra, will live in the British capital for three years, first together, then separately. Gil blends into underground circles , we see him playing with prominent groups, frequenting art galleries and record shops. His brother-in-law drags his melancholy, his " saudade ". Brazil misses him, his sister too. This is what he expressed in 1971 in one of his two discs recorded in London. The title bears the name of the loved one: Maria Bethania .
Each in their own way, the two artists have lived intensely these three years in London. Gil discovered reggae thanks to Jamaican immigrants, which he will popularize in Brazil. Veloso got closer to the African roots of his native land. After having received assurances from the government in place, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil finally returned to the country at the beginning of 1972. Their voice will not be extinguished, on the contrary.
... before a long-awaited return home
Both will offer in the 1970s very personal, mixed, solar records. Then, it will be the big leap into public life for Gilberto Gil, elected local ecologist in Santiago, defender of indigenous peoples, creator of a foundation for the oceans, United Nations ambassador and also Minister of Culture of the Lula government between 2003. and 2008. He is therefore a major figure in contemporary Brazilian history.
Caetano Veloso, for his part, successfully focuses on his art. He regularly fills theaters on five continents, including England, where he returns often. These Lennon and McCartney of Brazilian popular music, as they have often been presented, symbolically found themselves in music during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Rio in 2016.
At 78 for Gil, one less for Veloso, political commitments continue. They oppose, for example, the policy of current President Jair Bolsonaro, which only brings back bad memories. "Fascism shows its claws", they lament. "It is a clear threat to our heritage and our civilization." Committed one day, always engaged.
Find all the other episodes of our series "The Isle of Wight Festival, 50 years later":
> Episode 1: the last notes of Morrison's Doors
> Episode 2: Mighty Baby, talent without glory