You might have heard of ‘Avengers: Infinity wars’ as being the greatest crossover event in modern day history. I like to disagree. Not because I didn’t like that movie. In fact, I loved it. But I can think of at least two more impactful events like that: Bandaid’s ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’ and Artists for Africa’s ‘We are the world’. Both of these events united musicians in raising funds to aid the people who were affected by disasters: The African famine in the 1980s.
Inspired by TV reports about famine in Ethiopia, two UK born musicians Bob Geldof and Midge Ure wrote a song about the tragedy. They found many British and Irish musicians willing and able to contribute to the song, including Bono (U2), George Michael (Wham!) and Phil Collins (Genesis). The song instantly rose to the charts, aided by a lot of media coverage and was the UK Christmas number 1 of 1984. This single was one of the fastest selling singles ever in the UK, as it sold over a million copies within a week after its release. Worldwide, it sold over 11 million copies before the end of 1989. The writers felt that raising £70.000 would be a very nice achievement, but within a year of its release, the song had raised over eight million pounds. The song was re-recorded 3 times, in 1989, 2004 and 2014. The first two again to raise funds for famine relief, while the 2014 rendition was aimed to aid the Ebola crisis in Africa.
After the massive success of the efforts by Bandaid, activist Harry Belafonte and fundraiser Ken Kragen saw fit to come up with a similar project for the USA. The pair started to approach some musicians, and eventually decided to bestow the honors of writing the song upon Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie. The song was completed about 7 weeks after the release of ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’ and brought together some of the biggest artists in the industry at the time. Well-known artists who contributed to the song include Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross and Bob Dylan. Bandaid founder Bob Geldof also contributed to the chorus of the song. Overall, ‘We are the world’ was able to raise 63 million dollars for humanitarian aid in Africa and the USA. But the song did not only perform well with fundraising. It received much critical appraise, as it went on to win numerous awards, including three Grammys (most notably Record of the year and Song of the year).
As disasters strike, usually humanity will extend efforts to help the people affected around the world. Here in the Netherlands I can think of a similar project (Artiesten voor Azië) to help the victims of the tsunamis in the Indian Ocean on December 26th 2004. Many artists set up projects themselves, like the Heal the world foundation by Michael Jackson and Music for relief by Linkin Park. Sometimes these disasters also inspire artists, as many disasters have been the inspiration for music. Because of the size of the music industry, many projects like these but also bands and individual artists have been able to contribute in times of need, but on the other hand, their music can provide comfort and support to the victims in and of itself. I think we can all agree that music can be pretty strange sometimes, but this side of it all is near impossible not to like.
