A boy plays a trumpet while a motorcar passes through the street in front of his house. Later on, this boy will play in the South African Miagi Youth Orchestra while the conductor tells their illustrious visitor, prominent musician and former Brazilian Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil, how the orchestra, which was created in 2007, represents a first step towards creating Mandela's idea of a rainbow nation— a diverse and multi-ethnic South Africa.
Both these images and the conductor's statement are examples of how Pierre-Yves Borgeaud's most recent documentary Viramundo (2013) intertwines music, race, memory, and religion, always in Gil's delightful screen presence. Gil tours with his music through the southern hemisphere, from his native state of Bahia to Sydney, from Johannesburg and Pretoria, and finally to São Gabriel da Cachoeira in the Brazilian Amazon, where the film ends.
Gil encounters several musicians and activists in a complex journey in which he performs and reflects on the crucial place music plays in keeping traditions alive, as well as shielding the memories and life experiences of peoples who, in Gil's words, were victimized by centuries of colonialism. For both Gil and Borgeaud, music has the unique ability to speak the language of diasporic peoples whose pain was caused by the stark expansion of Europe, which is responsible for slavery and the annihilation of the indigenous population in Brazil, the apartheid in South Africa, and the extermination and marginalization of aboriginal peoples in Australia.
Alongside a multiethnic group of young musicians, the boy who plays the trumpet in the South African orchestra symbolizes an attempt at reconciliation and inclusiveness in a nation torn apart for decades by ferocious racism and systemic violence against its black population. Later on Gil visits Mamelodi, Pretoria with musician Vusi Mahlasela, who shows him the material remains of state violence. Mahlasela, nevertheless, preaches pacification to Gil, who nods silently.
A different exchange is seen during the Brazilian's visit to Australia. After meeting and performing with rappers and activists in an Aborigine youth center in Redfern, Sydney— a neighborhood "devastated by drugs, unemployment, and alcoholism," says leader Patrick Dodson— Gil keeps traveling from community to community singing and hearing painful stories that cry out exclusion and continuing overt racism. His meeting with Timmy 'Djawa' Burarrwanga, an aboriginal who belongs to the Gumatj clan, is rich, but tense. After a ritual, an upset Timmy asks how it is possible that Gil, a black man, used to be Minister of the Arts. He almost yells, "you can't be in the federal government!" Gil explains that Brazil has endured a long path toward recognition and openness regarding its black population.
Viramundo, Pierre-Yves Borgeaud (2013)
With a mixture of disbelief, fear, admiration, and without being fully aware, Timmy disputes Gil's experience regarding race and racial mixing. With a remarkable subtlety enhanced by the photography of Camille Cottagnoud, the director allows these varied and often antagonistic visions to co-exist in the same narrative without spoiling the fundamental role music has played in affixing and maintaining a diasporic identity.
Madosini Latozi Mpahleni, Xhosa musician, playing with Gil's percussionist Gustavo di Dalva. // Viramundo, Pierre-Yves Borgeaud (2013)
