It was an odd scene one recent evening. The Brazilian Minister of Culture -- a graying but robust man in his 60s -- danced frenetically, goofily with a 20-something longhaired, bearded American hippie. Both flailed their legs and arms, both flashed huge grins and sparkly eyes, exuding pure joy, and then walked away, arms around each other into the night.Unusual? Maybe. But not entirely, given the setting: On stage at the Hollywood Bowl in front of a delighted crowd of more than 12,000 people, most of them dancing along. This sort of tableau is exactly the kind of thing the people at the Bowl have tried to make routine for a decade now since founding the World Festival, an annual series put on in association with noted non-commercial radio station KCRW-FM in Santa Monica. The dancing fools this night were the evening's headliners: Brazilian great Gilberto Gil -- co-founder with Caetano Veloso and others of the '60s tropicalista movement, jailed and exiled as a dissident and now for the last five years his government's culture czar -- and Devendra Banhart -- the young prince of what has been described variously as Freak Folk and New Weird (or Wyrd) America, though truth be told he reaches well beyond those labels.
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