There is no shortage of
Gilberto Gil live albums, but then again each is a bit special and most tend to be pretty great.
BandaDois is a CD/DVD package that captures
Gil at his most intimate, as he revisits his entire career alone on a small circular stage, surrounded by rays of blue light and smoke. Solo guitar-and-voice live albums can get a bit monotonous, unless one is talking about someone who can play and sing as wonderfully as
Gil, let alone do both simultaneously. Music simply flows through the body and soul of the most youthful 67-year-old in the world, who can croon, sing in falsetto, whistle, tweet, or chirp in the same effortless manner that his fingers write the book on all the possible rhythmic and harmonic permutations of samba, Brazilian folklore, African music, pop, and the kitchen sink of world music, all at the same time and all without as much as a hint of virtuoso cockiness. Rather, all is done in the joyful, serene, and self-effacing trademark style that has deservedly turned
Gil into a universally beloved artist. Oh, and he can cherry-pick his compositions from one of world music's most brilliant and respected catalogs, too, as well as dispensing tributes to
Jackson do Pandeiro and
Doryval Caymmi, and a couple of new songs proving (as his latest studio album,
Fe na Festa, can eminently attest) that he remains a superior creative force. In all fairness, one would be hard-pressed to say that the acoustic renditions of
BandaDois are better than the originals -- if the consummate musician that
Gil is chose to record most of those with a full band or with electric instruments, you could be sure there would be very good reason to do so. But
BandaDois succeeds splendidly in showing
Gil's many classics in a new light, which is exactly what all-acoustic live albums should do. Just to spruce things up,
Gil is joined by his sons
Bem on tambourine and guitar (on 16 out of 24 songs on the DVD; the CD only features 16 tracks) and
Jose on bass (on
"Refavela" and
"Baba Alapala"), as well as by singer
Maria Rita, daughter of
Elis Regina and now a star in her own right, on
"Amor Ate o Fim." The extras on the DVD include step-by-step lessons on how to play five of
Gil's best compositions, which are guaranteed to send guitar freaks worldwide drooling. And since
Gil is the staunch supporter of open sharing that he is, all the clips are freely available on
Gil's YouTube channel. What else is there to say? You simply have to love the man, and his flat out-of-this-planet music. And it just keeps on getting better: for his 2010 tour
Gil reformatted the
BandaDois project into
BandaTreis, with the addition of
Jacques Morelenbaum on cello. ~ Mariano Prunes
