Whoa, you really had to catch your breath and race to the Austin Convention Center to catch the major stories, speakerwise, at SXSW. Gilberto Gil took the stage Wednesday midafternoon to talk about tropicalia, new technology, and hip-hop initiatives Brazil has undertaken since he’s become the country’s Minister of Culture.
With a laptop firmly placed in his lap, the disarming Gil gamely tackled words thrown at him like “expediency” (“one of those Latin words,” he mused) and discussed the cultural points program, which provides resources to hip-hop artists in Brazil, and his first encounter with the form in the US. “Someone gave me a Last Poets tape, and I said, what is that? It isn’t music but it’s music,” he said.