Brazilian Minister of Culture and music legend Gilberto Gil transported audiences at Google Zeitgeist Europe with a message of hope, change and revolution through technological innovation:

“The conversion of the digital technologies, has created around the Internet a totally peaceful revolution. A bottom up unrest, happening everywhere, which I see as a very positive sign of the rising of a non governmental political movement that I believe to be a direct and matured result of cultural and countercultural movements of our most recent history, in their increasing power to influence public policies.”

(via Joi Ito - thanks Joi!)

For many, Gil’s vision is most directly experienced through his music. The ideas he presents in Google Zeitgeist are informed by many of the same concerns of the Brasileira music movement (MPB), which is a music deeply committed to social change. From Wikipedia:

“The earliest MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) borrowed elements of the bossa nova and often relied on thinly-veiled criticism of social injustice and governmental repression, being based on progressive opposition to the political scene characterized by military dictatorship, concentration of land ownership, and imperialism. A variation within MPB was the short-lived but influential artistic movement known as tropicália.”

You can learn more about Gilberto Gil at his official website.

Further viewing:
The Google Zeitgeist Youtube playlist

Image credit: (CC) Joi Ito