Gilberto Gil

Gilberto Gil was born in Salvador in 1942 and spent his childhood in Ituaçu, in the backlands of Bahia, listening to viola players, the town band, and Luiz Gonzaga's records. Back in the capital, he studied accordion for four years and formed the group Os Desafinados. His mother gave him a guitar in 1961, and João Gilberto led him to bossa nova. After graduating in Business Administration in Bahia in 1964, he went to work in São Paulo and sing on weekends. A central figure in Tropicália, Brazil's late-1960s avant-garde popular-music movement, he wore a replica of the ceremonial uniform of the Academia Brasileira de Letras on the 1968 LP Gilberto Gil. Arrested with Caetano Veloso in 1969, he lived in exile in London until 1972.