A Band-Aid indeed, best cast away
November 22, 2004
Another bunch of pop stars is about to record a new version of a dreadful song, writes Joan Smith.
''Feed the world," they pleaded 20 years ago, to a soundtrack of Christmas chimes, but did anyone listen? Sir Bob Geldof, the driving force behind Band Aid, was in Africa recently where, he says, conditions have not improved since he first assembled a starry cast in 1984.
Geldof says he is sickened that many Africans still regard hunger as normal. "Today more people die of hunger than of war, AIDS, polio, TB and malaria combined in Africa," he said.
Geldof must have experienced a powerful sense of deja vu last week when he persuaded another bunch of pop stars, including Katie Melua and Ms Dynamite, into Sir George Martin's Air Studios to record a new version of the original Band Aid single, Do They Know It's Christmas?
Everyone involved - Sir Paul McCartney, Robbie Williams and Dido had recorded their contributions - is being upbeat, which cannot disguise the fact that it is one of the worst songs ever written and performed.
"Musically it is very now. Very current. I really like it," Ms Dynamite said bravely, considering that the new single is being tipped to join the ranks of candidates for all-time dreadful Christmas No. 1s. It is a crowded field.
Clearly something happens to people who buy singles at this time of the year, putting them in the mood for repeated doses of sugary sentimentality as they prepare to spend several trying days cooped up with their relatives.
But the Band Aid single is problematic for other reasons. Even in the more innocent age in which it was first recorded, it seemed gob-smacking that no one involved in the project questioned the appropriateness of singing Do They Know It's Christmas? in the context of a famine in Ethiopia.
Not only was it hard to believe that starving children and their parents had given much thought to Santa, but as the columnist Julie Burchill said at the time, many of the intended recipients of Geldof's largesse were Muslims.
Two decades later, with Islam at the top of the political agenda, it would be reasonable to expect a greater degree of cultural sensitivity from even the most bone-headed celebrities.
What makes it even worse this time is that the proceeds of the record are intended for Sudan, where the Darfur region has become notorious as the site of a savage religious and ethnic conflict, prosecuted against the Christian and Animist population by the Janjaweed (Muslim) militia. The prospect of starvation in Darfur over the next few weeks is not the result of the harvest failing or some other natural disaster but the deliberate destruction of crops in the course of this conflict.
In May the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights identified large-scale human rights violations in Darfur. It talked about murder, rape and pillage. In July Amnesty International produced detailed evidence of gang rape of children, sexual slavery and the abduction of girls as young as eight.
Britain is the second largest bilateral donor of aid to Darfur after the US, having allocated £62.5 million ($148 million) in the past 14 months. It is true that more money is needed but the most urgent problem is political will.
The Chancellor, Gordon Brown, recently prompted headlines when he told Geldof he would waive tax payments due to the Government on sales of the Band Aid single. But this small gesture is dwarfed by the continuing reluctance of Tony Blair to send British troops to prevent further war crimes in Sudan.
Last week the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, was caught on the hop at a press conference to launch his annual Human Rights Report when he was questioned about an incident that day in which Sudanese police fired teargas and beat residents of the El-Geer refugee camp in front of helpless UN and African Union officials.
In this context, asking people to buy a single and hum "feed the world" seems banal. For people who like pop music, but don't know much about Africa, it threatens to obscure the reason why starvation threatens more than a million people in Darfur - and the fact that they desperately need more than handouts.
"The only sustainable solution to the crisis in Darfur is a political one which addresses the underlying causes of the conflict," the Foreign Office said last week. Try setting that to music and see if it goes to No. 1.
The Independent
