It's not easy being a pop star and a government minister at the same time, but that won't stop Brazil's Gilberto Gil from taking his music and social justice policies on a world tour this year.
The Brazilian culture minister and pop icon says he has a lot of work to do these days and less time to compose and sing the songs that have made him one of the country's best-known figures.
"I have little time to listen to music. Even so I'm listening to some new things in Chilean rap, Uruguayan Candombe and Peruvian indigenous music," Gil said as he waited for Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to give a speech.
After Brazil's Carnival, which starts in February, he will visit Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia to meet officials and play music.
He will also travel to Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Denmark to carry out his unique pop diplomacy.
"I always go around combining the two things. One job enriches the other," Gil said.
Since the 1960s, Gil has been one of the most famous singers and composers in Brazil. With singers Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa and others he helped found Tropicalia, the musical movement that followed Bossa Nova. This year Gil was named man of the year at the Latin Grammy awards in Miami.
A passionate environmentalist allied to Brazil's Green Party, Gil was invited to become minister of culture in January last year when Lula's Workers' Party (PT) formed Brazil's first elected leftist government.
Gil, who started out with a day job as a cosmetics company manager before switching fulltime to music, used his new position to launch projects to bring the arts to shantytowns and the landless. He hopes to triple film production and win lottery funds for cultural projects.
His brief is to use the arts to drive social cohesion in a country with some of the world's widest wealth divisions.
With his dreadlocks, sharp black suit, and wiry frame, Gil, 61, stands out from most of his ministerial colleagues. He can be seen carrying his guitar to work.
Gil says changes are constant in his life. He sees nothing strange about going from music to politics.
"They're natural changes, flows of transformation. They would be ruptures if I had abandoned my careers," Gil said.
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