Paul McCartney isn't the only 80-year-old to have headlined a festival this year.
His Brazilian peer Gilberto Gil put on an outstanding performance at Jazzablanca in Morocco.
Taking to the stage at Anfa Park last Saturday, he performed a six-decade-career-spanning set that helped introduce the world to Tropicalia, a 1960s Brazilian musical and cultural movement melding indigenous and African rhythms with British and American psychedelic rock and pop.
Backed by a 10-piece band, Gil was in great form as he conjured up the sunny funk stylings of Baba Alapala and, perhaps as a nod to McCartney's Glastonbury Festival achievement, a Brazilian cover of Get Back by The Beatles.
An interesting aspect of the show was that he didn’t play any tracks from his "new" album.
The lost album
As part of his 80th birthday celebrations, Gil has teamed up with Google Arts and Culture for The Rhythm of Gil, one of the largest online retrospective exhibitions dedicated to a living artist.
Launched last month, the wealth of material is truly expansive.
There are 900 digitised videos and tapes of performances and music-related content, and more than 140 stories and testimonies from Gil and his friends.
All the works together to tell an unlikely story of a marginalised black Brazilian, from growing up in a poor neighbourhood in the coastal city of Bahia to becoming the country's minister of culture for a five-year spell in 2003.
Amid all that preparations for the exhibition, an archivist found a series of tapes assumed lost for 40 years.
They are from a New York recording session in 1982, and feature contributions from soul singer Roberta Flack and revered bassist Marcus Miller.
Speaking to The National from Morocco, Gil says he is content "the lost album," which, according to the exhibition, was meant to be called Jump for Joy, is featured as one of the many treasure of the show.
"I don't know how it was found," he says.
"It was by somebody whose job in Brazil is to find exactly that sort of thing. He was digging through the archives and found this precious gem."
With the exception of the Portuguese track Estrela, rerecorded and released as part of 1997 album Quanta, all nine songs digitised from the New York recordings are in English.
It is also a product of its time, with the tracks exhibiting some of that compressed sonic sheen rendering many albums of that era as tinny-sounding.
That said, it is in the breezy percussion of When the Wind Blows and Jump for Joy, featuring Flack, that listeners can appreciate Gil's goal of blending Brazilian and Caribbean rhythms with the '80s RnB and funk sounds of the day.
Preparing for leadership
Gil doesn't view the album as a lost commercial opportunity, as he has formed his career in opposition to popular trends.
He sold bananas in shopping malls and composed jingles for television advertisements, before his career took off in Brazil in the late 1960s.
Since Gil was part of the Tropicalia movement, the former military government had kept a close eye on the artist owing to the group's pro-democracy stance.
Gil was eventually arrested and imprisoned for three months, which was followed by a further six-month home incarceration.
He describes some of his political missives, such as 1969's Cerebro Eletronico (which translates as Electronic brain and was written while Gil was in prison) and the 1985 anti-apartheid anthem Libertacao da Africa do Sul, as natural responses to the world around him.
However, he admits to having ambitions of becoming a civic leader from a young age.
"I didn't set out to be a political artist. That was not my starting position," he says.
"When you are young it is only natural to be concerned when it comes to the rapport between government and society. As a student I was being prepared to become some kind of chief and I felt to do that I had to be listening and watching the environment around me.
“That was my attitude and as a natural consequence it also came out in some of the music.”
Gil eventually fulfilled his potential and became one of Brazil's first black ministers as part of former president Lula da Silva’s government, a decision that would temporarily place his music career on the back burner.
However, it's his recent tours and working on The Rhythm of Gil exhibition that have allowed him to fully appreciate the unfiltered communication that only music can provide.
"I look at it as similar to the sounds of the birds," he says.
"They are universal, eternal and durable. We all have a natural impulse towards expressing our feelings and thoughts and music can do that.
“It's that rare thing that can be respected and absorbed by everybody."
The Rhythm of Gil can be viewed here.
Scroll through the gallery below for pictures from the Jazzablanca Festival 2022 in Morocco
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ESSENTIALS
The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh via Yangon from Dh2,700 return including taxes. Cambodia Bayon Airlines and Cambodia Angkor Air offer return flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap from Dh250 return including taxes. The flight takes about 45 minutes.
The hotels
Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.
The tours
A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages.
At a glance
- 20,000 new jobs for Emiratis over three years
- Dh300 million set aside to train 18,000 jobseekers in new skills
- Managerial jobs in government restricted to Emiratis
- Emiratis to get priority for 160 types of job in private sector
- Portion of VAT revenues will fund more graduate programmes
- 8,000 Emirati graduates to do 6-12 month replacements in public or private sector on a Dh10,000 monthly wage - 40 per cent of which will be paid by government
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The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre turbo
Power: 181hp
Torque: 230Nm
Transmission: 6-speed automatic
Starting price: Dh79,000
On sale: Now
Ferrari 12Cilindri specs
Engine: naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12
Power: 819hp
Torque: 678Nm at 7,250rpm
Price: From Dh1,700,000
Available: Now
Pad Man
Dir: R Balki
Starring: Akshay Kumar, Sonam Kapoor, Radhika Apte
Three-and-a-half stars
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Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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United States
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China
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UAE
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Japan
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Norway
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Canada
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Singapore
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Australia
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Saudi Arabia
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South Korea
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Results
Stage 5:
1. Jonas Vingegaard (DEN) Team Jumbo-Visma 04:19:08
2. Tadej Pogacar (SLO) UAE Team Emirates 00:00:03
3. Adam Yates (GBR) Ineos Grenadiers
4. Sergio Higuita (COL) EF Education-Nippo 00:00:05
5. Joao Almeida (POR) Deceuninck-QuickStep 00:00:06
General Classification:
1. Tadej Pogacar (SLO) UAE Team Emirates 17:09:26
2. Adam Yates (GBR) Ineos Grenadiers 00:00:45
3. Joao Almeida (POR) Deceuninck-QuickStep 00:01:12
4. Chris Harper (AUS) Team Jumbo-Visma 00:01:54
5. Neilson Powless (USA) EF Education-Nippo 00:01:56
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Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
Who has been sanctioned?
Daniella Weiss and Nachala
Described as 'the grandmother of the settler movement', she has encouraged the expansion of settlements for decades. The 79 year old leads radical settler movement Nachala, whose aim is for Israel to annex Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where it helps settlers built outposts.
Harel Libi & Libi Construction and Infrastructure
Libi has been involved in threatening and perpetuating acts of aggression and violence against Palestinians. His firm has provided logistical and financial support for the establishment of illegal outposts.
Zohar Sabah
Runs a settler outpost named Zohar’s Farm and has previously faced charges of violence against Palestinians. He was indicted by Israel’s State Attorney’s Office in September for allegedly participating in a violent attack against Palestinians and activists in the West Bank village of Muarrajat.
Coco’s Farm and Neria’s Farm
These are illegal outposts in the West Bank, which are at the vanguard of the settler movement. According to the UK, they are associated with people who have been involved in enabling, inciting, promoting or providing support for activities that amount to “serious abuse”.
Indoor cricket World Cup:
Insportz, Dubai, September 16-23
UAE fixtures:
Men
Saturday, September 16 – 1.45pm, v New Zealand
Sunday, September 17 – 10.30am, v Australia; 3.45pm, v South Africa
Monday, September 18 – 2pm, v England; 7.15pm, v India
Tuesday, September 19 – 12.15pm, v Singapore; 5.30pm, v Sri Lanka
Thursday, September 21 – 2pm v Malaysia
Friday, September 22 – 3.30pm, semi-final
Saturday, September 23 – 3pm, grand final
Women
Saturday, September 16 – 5.15pm, v Australia
Sunday, September 17 – 2pm, v South Africa; 7.15pm, v New Zealand
Monday, September 18 – 5.30pm, v England
Tuesday, September 19 – 10.30am, v New Zealand; 3.45pm, v South Africa
Thursday, September 21 – 12.15pm, v Australia
Friday, September 22 – 1.30pm, semi-final
Saturday, September 23 – 1pm, grand final
ADCC AFC Women’s Champions League Group A fixtures
October 3: v Wuhan Jiangda Women’s FC
October 6: v Hyundai Steel Red Angels Women’s FC
October 9: v Sabah FA
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
SOUTH%20KOREA%20SQUAD
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Gothia Cup 2025
4,872 matches
1,942 teams
116 pitches
76 nations
26 UAE teams
15 Lebanese teams
2 Kuwaiti teams
