A musical view on the song “Filhos de Gandhy” from Gilberto Gil’s performance at USP in 1973

Abstract

This article aims to show and contextualize some performance aspects of the song Filhos de Gandhy by Gilberto Gil, in the concert played by the artist in 26^th, May of 1973 at the Escola Politécnica da USP – a legendary concert, controversial, and with significant political content that gradually has been rediscovered. The choice of this tune is somehow related to our affection with the afoxé Filhos de Gandhy itself, and also to the possibility of doing an analysis of the “happening” performed by Gilberto Gil during this concert – where he incorporates, as we can say, an “entity” that tells “causos” (stories), and narrates in details the history of this afoxé. This work investigates the artist performance and its developments proposed by Gil in his guitar, that condenses rhythmic elements from ijexá’s drums, by playing a groove while he sings a melody that interacts all the time with that base. This kind of performance had already become iconic then, since Gil had performed it in many concerts at that time.