Froma Harrop: Rockin' Brazil's ministry of culture
01/05/2003
WELCOME, GILBERTO GIL, Brazil's new minister of culture. You've won enthusiastic acclaim as a pop singer-guitarist whose urbane music leaves one's hearing intact. (Your Grammy-winning album Quanta plays as I type.) You are far less appreciated in your current gig as a cabinet member under the new Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Most of the criticisms against you are, to me, fine qualifications for the job. If you ever get tired of fighting entrenched political and cultural interests in Brazil, please come to the United States and take over the National Endowment for the Arts.
Now why are members of Brazil's establishment sitting on their hands as you samba by? The political extremes don't like you because you have promoted sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. The right disapproves of the sex and drugs, and the left scorns the rock 'n' roll (too American).
Members of the left-leaning Workers' Party don't like you because you're not one of them. You belong to Brazil's small Green Party. In the past, you've endorsed candidates running against your new boss. Party loyalists can't figure out why da Silva named you as culture minister.
You irritated a number of people by complaining that you cannot live on the $2,500-a-month salary given Brazilian cabinet members. You vow to continue performing with your band on weekends to augment the family's income.
Your fellow countrymen don't say this out loud, but some undoubtedly disapprove of you for being black and from Bahia. A northeastern Brazilian province, Bahia is the land of the long siesta and not known for 24/7 ambition.
There are even those who don't like your dress. You are seen wearing all white, the emblem of peace in the Afro-Brazilian religion. You keep your hair in dreadlocks and avoid ties. To ease such concerns, you wore a dark suit to da Silva's inauguration.
You say, "I am a tolerant person and not easily offended." Thank goodness for that.
Finally, you have expressed dangerously original ideas on what a ministry of culture ought to do. You almost seem to think Brazil doesn't need one. "We have to free ourselves a bit from the idea that the responsibility of the Ministry of Culture is to produce culture," you said. In your view, a culture ministry should have two simple missions: 1) Create the conditions in which culture can be made. 2) Help bring the people who make culture and audiences together.
Gilberto Gil, you're so right. Why on earth would Brazil need a government bureaucracy to push its culture? It's music and dance conquered the world long ago. Brazil's great cultural offerings sprang from the soil and the soul -- not committees reading grant proposals in Brasilia office buildings. If I have it right, then, you'd want to enhance the overall environment for the arts, rather than pick and choose among art works deserving taxpayer subsidies.
President da Silva deserves applause for appointing a politically hard-to-herd artist who probably didn't even vote for him. And not every leftist would promote a minister of culture who thrives in the commercial world and takes inspiration from American pop music -- regarded on much of the planet as a weapon of U.S. imperialism.
How the ideologues or the grant applicants will take to you, Gilberto Gil, I don't know. All I know is that you would make a great chairman of our own National Endowment for the Arts.
Congressional conservatives took an ax to the NEA budget after the endowment stupidly subsidized such controversial works as Andres Serrano's photo of a crucifix soaking in urine. The biggest complaints nowadays come from liberals who say that the endowment only supports "art that is safe."
American culture, high and low, dominates the globe, so it's sometimes hard to understand why we even need an NEA. The United States produces mountains of art, music, drama and movies. There's always a public for things people want to see and hear. And if an artist can't find an appreciative audience to pay the rent, well, that's what day jobs are for.
Gilberto Gil, you could have a great future shrinking ministries of culture. Meanwhile, good luck in your new position. You'll do fine work building Brazil's wealth of creative expression, especially on weekends, when you're away from the ministry, playing with your band.
Froma Harrop is a Journal editorial writer and syndicated columnist. She may be reached by e-mail at: fharrop@projo.com.