ONCE AN OUTSPOKEN leader of Brazil's counterculture and a spokesman for its black consciousness movement, Gilberto Gil now finds himself kicking back in Rio, contemplating the millennium with a surprising optimism. And why shouldn't he? Three decades separate the 57-year-old multi-instrumentalist from the heyday of Tropicália, the revolutionary musical movement he founded with Caetano Veloso in 1967. Over the phone, Gil says democracy is now well-established in his country, having shed the dictatorial regime that jailed him and Veloso in the late Sixties and bullied them both into... More >>>