On January 2, Gilberto Gil was sworn in as Brazil’s culture minister. For many people in the United States, the dreadlocked musician’s name was the only familiar one among the 33 members of President Lula da Silva’s cabinet. The names of Antonio Palocci, the new finance minister, Guido Mantega, the new planning minister, and a few others like those of environmental activist Marina Silva, now environment minister, will become better known outside Brazil as they help Lula navigate the treacherous shoals of international opinion and finance. As they do so, they might take a cue or two from the international pop star’s sometimes controversial career.
Gil, no stranger to the arcane idiom of cultural theorists, spoke in his inaugural address of the “semiodiversidade”—diversity of meanings—of Brazilian culture. He promised that his ministry, unlike its predecessors, would reflect Brazil’s racial and regional diversity; and that Brazil’s many forms of popular culture would not be marginalized as “folklore.”
All the same, his appointment sparked opposition within the Brazilian left: Gil had supported Lula’s candidacy, but he is a Green Party activist, not a member of Lula’s Worker’s Party (PT), and some prominent PT artists complained that the musician had had no role in creating, and might not do enough to support, a PT cultural program that stresses from-the-grassroots arts including theater and videomaking.
The Brazilian left’s quarrel with Gil has deeper roots, however: Back in the 1960s and 70s, at a time when Brazil was ruled by a U.S.-backed military dictatorship, Gil and fellow musician Caetano Veloso were creating a blend of Brazilian musical styles and U.S. and British-style rock that was dubbed “Tropicalismo.” Orthodox leftists frowned; in their view, the rock-and-rolling Tropicalistas were willing dupes for U.S. cultural imperialism. Veloso, taking a cue from an early 20th century Brazilian art movement, responded that they were actually engaged in cultural anthropophagy—cannibalism—the consumption and digestion of foreign culture for their own ends. What they were creating, he said, was a new hybrid that was as truly Brazilian as that of the traditionalists. Eventually, most Brazilians—and many others around the world—came to agree.
Three decades later, if it’s become clear how rock and rap can be stewed with samba, forro, and frevo to form tasty new forms of music that bring the world to Brazil and Brazil to the world; it’s also clear that the major record labels have learned to assimilate and sell such blends as sometimes innocuous “World Music.” Meanwhile, cannibal Gil has continued to walk the tightrope of building an international audience while holding on to Brazilian fans and staying politically active. His fellow cabinet members could do worse than to draw from the notion of creative cannibalism as they search for ways to feed Brazilians while not being swallowed up themselves by neoliberal demands.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JoAnn Kawell is the Editor of the NACLA Report on the Americas
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