Biography

Preta Maria Gadelha Gil Moreira (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈpɾetɐ maˈɾiɐ ɡaˈdeʎɐ ˈʒiw moˈɾejɾɐ]) (born 8 August 1974), known as Preta Gil (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈpɾetɐ ˈʒiw]), is a Brazilian singer and actress. She is the daughter of Gilberto Gil, a musician and former Minister of Culture in Brazil. In 1974, Gil's father, singer Gilberto Gil, went to a government office to register his daughter's name after his own mother's name. On arrival, the clerk informed him he was unable to register Preta as a name for his daughter. Gilberto Gil began to protest, "Why not? There's Branca (white), Clara (clear) and Rosa (rose) . . . why can't Preta (black) be a name?" The clerk would only agree if the name Preta accompanied a Catholic name. Thus, Gilberto Gil had to register his daughter under the name Preta Maria.

While Gil initially lived in Rio de Janeiro, she moved to Salvador at the age of one. Soon after, her mother, Sandra, had another daughter named Maria. Gil always believed that the decision to use the name Maria was the result of a lack of creativity. Gil also had an older brother, Pedro, who was born in London during her father's exile from Brazil. Gilberto Gil had left Brazil along with his friend, fellow singer Caetano Veloso, because a military dictatorship was in power.Sandra's mother was also the mother of Andréa Gadelha who is best known as Dedé, the wife of Caetano Veloso. Sandra's mother believed that her two daughters married crazy men. Both Gilberto Gil and Veloso were exiled and went to live in London, leaving Preta's grandmother to raise the children. She has great admiration for her grandmother, who stood firm at a chaotic time in her family's life.

Since childhood, Gil has had a very vivid imagination. She had an imaginary puppy when she was five. When her father made a record in Los Angeles with Sérgio Mendes, the family moved to California, where they lived for eight months. Gil's mother joked that the airplane that took them to Los Angeles was a slave ship since she and her children were black. Gil's siblings, Maria and Pedro, both had curly hair, and Gil has straight hair—Veloso used to call her Filipina.

Gil was in Rio de Janeiro at the height of the 1980s when Bombando, Blitz, Paralamas, Barão Vermelho, and Lulu Santos were popular. The Brazilian music scene in the 1980s was very striking. As a daughter of one of Brazil's music icons, Gil had backstage access to the craziness of that music scene. Gil said of these experiences: "It all made me crazy, loved this environment, I felt comfortable. The stage was one thing that attracted me a lot."

She wanted to be the character, "Chacrete," in the TV show Chacrinha. She spent every Saturday in the Fenix theater or the Botanical Garden. Gil's father, her uncle Veloso, and her godmother Gal Costa all ranked on music charts around this time. All three would go to tapings of the show Chacrinha. Gil would always beg her mother to ask her father, her uncle, and even her godmother to let her attend a taping of the show. One day, she was permitted to attend. When she went into her uncle Caetano's dressing room and saw all of the costumes and instruments, she thought that he was the male version of Carmen Miranda. When the taping began, she watched the "magic" happen from a corner. She loved Elke Maravilha who was a constant fixture on the show. That was the environment of the 1980s: effervescent, colorful, and full of life. This was the moment when she decided to become a singer and an actress. She would imitate her godmother, Gal Costa, and other reputable and talented singers and actresses that she loved like Rita Lee and Elba Ramalho.

In March 2020, she contracted COVID-19.In July 2020, she declared herself as pansexual.In addition to being the daughter of Gilberto Gil, she is the first cousin of the singer and musician Moreno Veloso (son of Caetano Veloso with his first wife, Andrea Gadelha) and the second cousin of actress Patricia Pillar and pop singer Luiza Possi. She is also related to popular Brazilian rock singer Marina Lima.