Gilberto Gil: Life, Music, Digital Divide

* From Political Prisoner to Cabinet Minister: Legendary Brazilian Musician Gilberto Gil on His Life, His Music and the Digital Divide

* Forty years ago, the legendary Brazilian musician Gilberto Gil was a political prisoner. Today, he is a cabinet official in the Brazilian government. As protests raged across the globe in 1968, Gil was at the center of a cultural and political revolution in Brazil known as Tropicalia. The movement was seen as such a threat to Brazil's military dictatorship that Gil was jailed, then forced into exile, where he would become one of the world's most celebrated musicians as well as a spokesperson for Brazil's emerging black consciousness movement.

Today, Gil remains one of Brazil's best known artists, as well as the country's Minister of Culture. He is now spearheading a different kind of anti-establishment revolution. This time it¹s about democratizing the distribution of intellectual property rights.

We spend the hour with Gilberto Gil in a wide-ranging interview on his life, his music, the black consciousness movement and the future of the internet.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/25/from_political_prisoner_to_cabinet