Gilberto Gil, Minister of Cool. Wikimedia Commons

Gilberto Gil, Grammy-award winning musician, served as Brazil’s Minister of Culture from 2003 to 2008. Political activist, passionate environmentalist, Gil introduced webcams into the deepest Amazon villages to broadcast the music of the people to the world. For this, Gil was nicknamed, “Minister of Cool.” Brazil’s new capitol, Brasilia, may have been the source of inspiration. Replacing Rio, Brasilia was named the new center of government in 1960, a vision made concrete by Lucio Costa through the architecture of Oscar Niemeyer, joined by Le Corbusier. Built in the shape of an airplane, the city is first in history designed to be seen from the air. Now, Gilberto Gil has taken “air” to a new dimension. How can social media play a role in spotlighting and preserving culture?

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.