Isn't SDL itself is quite minimal already? I mean, it is definitely not high-level in any sense of the word.

SDL provides..

..an image decoding library.

..an audio input/output library.

..a multi-channel audio mixer.

..ttf and rtf font rendering.

..networking.

..runtime shader cross-compilation

..its own entire graphics abstraction layer / API.

..its own shader language, shader compiler, and shader bytecode format.

I don't know at which point something becomes 'high level', but SDL is only 'minimal' if you use a subset of its functionality.

Not minimal in the sense of "just give me a window, a minimal event loop, and a GPU context/swapbuffers function".