AUSTIN, Texas--Gilberto Gil, who along with friend Caetano Veloso spearheaded the Brazilian Tropicalia musical and political movement in the 1960s, was once an icon of the counterculture scene throughout Latin America.

Now he is very much part of the establishment, but he's managed to retain that counterculture spirit as Brazil's minister of culture.

In an appearance at the SXSW festival today, the artist-turned-diplomat shared his insights on his music, his leadership, and the impact of technology on the cultural landscape. Gil made a direct connection between the 1960s counterculture he participated in and the technological issues that dominate much of his job.

"The Silicon Valley movement is very much a byproduct of the psychedelic movement," he said. "To be able to trip inside the crystal and the physics and the mathematics? The mind-expanding aspects of the psychedelic culture were central to that."

In the midst of his second term as the head of his country's ministry of culture, Gil doesn't spend much time on his own music these days. However, he does have a new album out of his older songs he rerecorded in 1999 with just voice and guitar, to accompany a book about him. The album is called Gil Luminoso.

Copyright issues have captured much of Gil's attention lately, he said, as he has struggled to find a balance between the polar extremes, as he called it, of "all right reserved" and "no rights reserved."

"Thomas Jefferson used to say that the intellectual domain is the one least compatible to property," he said. "When you light your candle and have your candle lit and you want to light somebody else's candle, you don't lose your own light by lighting your neighbor's candles."

"I can't establish a gratuity for my own ideas," he continued. "I say you can take my ideas and do what you will. That artistic autonomy is what is at stake now."

To find that balance, Gil has aligned Brazil with the Creative Commons, a 6-year-old group that seeks to give artists more options than all or no rights reserved. Creative Commons has devised a more flexible structure that allows artists to decide what part of their copyright they wish to retain and what part they are willing to share with the public.

"From all rights reserved to no rights reserved--in between is a huge spectrum," he said.

Sounds like someone has learned the art of compromise.