*I bet this guy gets a lot more local attention than most guitar-strumming tourists.
http://mg.co.za/article/2011-05-13-minister-of-music-mixing-the-sounds-south
Minister of music mixing the sounds of the south
MATTHEW WILHELM-SOLOMON May 13 2011 00:00
"Gilberto Gil, one of Brazil's best-known musicians, landed on South African tarmac last week. He is part of a film project called Connecting South, a one-month transnational voyage of the southern hemisphere that has taken him across the stark Australian Outback to inner-city Johannesburg and Soweto and on to the Amazon forests.
"The film explores different aspects of the relations between countries of the southern hemisphere," Gil says. "The idea of the film is to establish connections with the original people from those countries but then go into social questions – the problems of colonisation, poverty, inequality, unbalanced societies and injustice, but also the power and strength that remain in cultural terms, at least for those people and communities."
"Gil was approached by the Swiss production company, Dreampixies, because of his personality and history. He is a protean figure whose thought and music are characterised by an itinerant cosmopolitanism. He has produced more than 50 records and his work has drawn on a multitude of influences including Brazilian folk music, bossa nova, psychedelic rock, reggae, West African rhythms and even 1980s synth music.
"Minister of culture
"He emerged as a counterculture icon in the 1960s with a movement known as Tropicalismo.
"He was imprisoned for promoting revolutionary ideas and forced into exile (he went to London) by Brazil's military government of the time. Though allowed to return to Brazil several years later, Gil's life has traversed continents, cutting across both artistic and political spheres. The journey culminated in his appointment as Brazil's minister of culture between 2003 and 2007 by Brazil's progressive former president, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva.
"Against the backdrop of a plush Johannesburg northern suburbs hotel where we meet, Gil has the measured refinement of a politician, only occasionally beaming or becoming animated when talking about his memories of New York, playing music with his son, or his belief in the legalisation of marijuana.
"But once behind his guitar at the Newtown rehearsal venue, his countenance shifts, his placid face opens up and his distinctive singing – playful and percussive – envelops the room.
"His visit to South Africa provides an opening to new musical territory for him. Coming from Afro-Brazilian heritage, Gil's sound has been influenced by West African music, which has informed some of his classic albums such as Refavela. Gil met and was influenced by Fela Kuti.
"South Africa has not been one of the main African areas explored in my work. We [Brazilians] basically relate to Nigeria because of the links with Brazil and Angola, Senegal [and] countries on the Atlantic coast because of the geopolitics and geo-economics," Gil says (((and he's telling them the truth rather than flattering their local sensibilities, which is pretty interesting.)))
"He did meet South African musicians in exile though, including Hugh Masakela and the late Miriam Makeba, during the 1970s and 1980s. He also served with Makeba as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation and played several concerts on the same bill as Makeba.
(...)
"New ideas and technology
"The musical encounters and experimental approach, aimed at opening up new lines of music and thought, are seductive. Ecological issues and new technologies have also surfaced as major issues during this voyage, particularly in conversations with the Aborigines. Gil is a long-standing member of Brazil's Green Party and ecology is central to his approach to music and politics.
"He is animated by the liberatory potential of new technologies. As the minister of culture he oversaw a project that took new technology for the making of music and other arts to poor regions of Brazil. He also promotes flexible intellectual property rights for the distribution of music.
"One of the things we want to show is the role that the internet plays today for southern countries and for pop culture and pop politics and pop economics," says Gil.
"I asked him how his ecological principles align with his global travel...."
