Gilberto Gil, the Grammy award winning Brazilian singer, was minister of Culture in Brazil from 2003 to 2008. This piece illustrate how he combined his role as public figure and performing artist. Synopsis: Gilberto Gil is a busy man. The Minister of Culture in Brazil’s left-wing government is also an internationally known singer and composer. Both roles are invaluable to his efforts to make Brazilian culture and music more accessible to a wider national audience and to bolster their prominence on the international stage. He is a relative newcomer to the political scene, but the 63-year-old Gil was already one of the best-known cultural figures in Brazil when he was named culture minister by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in 2003. It was the same year Gil was honored as Man of the Year at the Latin Grammy Awards in Miami. He started his career as a businessman, becoming a manager at the consumer products giant Gessy Lever in Sao Paolo. But music was his true calling. By 1968, he had helped found the anti-establishment musical movement Tropicalia. He was considered a radical by the military government, imprisoned and then sent into exile in London in 1969. When he was allowed back to Brazil in 1972, he devoted his career to music and the environment. He is affiliated with the Green Party and founded ONG Onda Azul, a nongovernmental organization that fights for the preservation of water resources. Today; Gil still wears his hair in dreadlocks and walks around with a . . .