Yes, this has turned into a political article. A good friend of mine Aaron has been involved with my music projects for well over a decade (and has been a good friend of mine since we enrolled in Kindergarten together). In our high school post-secondary days, he was my band's photographer, writer, and concert reviewer. His efforts are now more useful as he completes his degree in English/journalism at a nearby university and as such, we got into a lengthy debate behind Band Aid 30. I wanted to share our conversation with you all in hopes you might have some thoughts and wisdom to share as well.
Granted some of my comments were probably taken out of context and spoken out of emotions/individual perception rather than research and delivery, but still makes for a great conversation nonetheless. Here is the original article this debate stemmed from.
**Please note that this conversation took place in an online chat, so the grammar and spelling errors has been corrected to best of our ability. Send me an email if you notice something we did not.**
Even though I am sure you have a rebuttal to this point, but I didn't realize that humans who are suffering from Ebola, famine, war, and poverty were able to tweet their issues with the philanthropy.
Second opening thought.
"Though the original song was recorded to raise money for Ethiopia, African critics say the stigma its simplistic message left behind affected not only that country, but a continent of 54 hugely-varied nations."
The original Live Aid raised over £8 million alone from the UK, not to mention the amount of funds coming from other countries.
Aaron: The Twitter issue is a fact of life. Twitter doesn't mean wealth. It means the country has been invested in and has the necessary infrastructure, and the people found a way to use it. Simply because we have a "standard" for what it means to be poor from doesn't mean that standard is somehow universal let alone silencing of their critique. We spend most of our days thinking Africa is this simple picture of broken nations, but we've leveled them to being only victims. But the most decisive thing all these individuals have addressed is how charity hinders the actual long-term economic development pursued by 54 different nations. And charity isn't sustainable, nor is foreign aid.
One of the key points raised by the article is that charities give a false sense of humanitarian and internationalist outlooks. They trend for the moment, consider an issue, but then stop while feeding the need to help entirely. The problem here is that these countries aren't needing charity. The situations they're in only pile up to the point of needing bursts of financial backing because of varying problems originating in unfair market practices, foreign aid that becomes more exploitative, and generally issues concerning global power structures. No one discusses these things because they're too damn busy figuring out ways to help "Africans" with pop songs so much that they disregard their opinions about their own societies. what would have been better for Kenya in the early 90s?
$50 million in charity money, or their president being able to invest national revenue into long-term infrastructure like schools and farming subsidies instead of having the IMF tell him he needs to put it away into an emergency fund, do nothing with it, or they'll pull the loan? Economic determination promoted by a vocal population of the west that could equal the force we spend on Band Aid is what Africans want. That will do more for Kenya than a a hundred Band Aid Concerts.
As for Ebola, one of the major social stigmas that helped spread Ebola is the idea that Westerners can't be trusted and that they bring more harm than good. I'm sure if we stopped for a minute instead of trying to act upon every impulse to help, there's a strong chance we can actually do significant good by backing off and allowing West Africa to deal with this the way West Africa wants to deal with this instead of telling them how its going to be. Moreover, the "white man's burden" and the "savior complex" are all concepts that have been far more destructive to Africa as an entire continent than famine, AIDS, civil war and genocide. In Uganda, Christian missionaries looking to provide aid and infrastructure also brought with them messages and texts expressing the word of the Lord and a right wing stance on homosexuality and sexual equality. Under the belief that "Africans should know God too", they fan already homophobic tendencies backed by old colonial laws, and turned Uganda into one of the world's most dangerous place to be gay, where last Christmas their parliament signed in a bill that set forth life imprisonment for homosexual displays and 2 year prison time for people who so much as know them.
We need to look past the money we give them and pat ourselves on the back with for having "done" something to "help" and consider other avenues. Throwing money at Ebola doesn't get to the root cause. I mean, you realize that the number one sources for the initial spread of Ebola comes from a black market trend in the sale of unregulated or uncertified bush meat? So ask yourself, why would a society turn to a means of economic subsistence that proves catastrophic? Maybe it means that when a financial analyst from Ethiopia talks about how the ideas conjured up by western charity proves detrimental for other projects like tourist industry development and long-term foreign investment, that financial analyst may not be acting like a cynic, but rather as a pragmatic individual talking about a real problem more permanent than Ebola and makes it possible for such crisis situations to occur.
AFGM: Abdullahi Halakhe, Robtel Neajai Pailey, Dawit Gebreselassie, Hadiyya Mwapachu, Chitra Nagarajan, and Patrick Bond have all spoken about how they are taking the lyrical content of the song, but fail to implement or even give a spark of interest into how they would raise £8 million [in 1985] to offset the donations Geldof's "the worst songs in history". This goes back to my old philosophy of, unless you plan to contribute to the solution, then f**k off with your cynicism of someone else.
Aaron: All of them have precisely told you how to deal with the problem. They are concerned with the problem and finding a solution, Band Aid and its supporters are looking to throw some money at it. There have been numerous Ebola outbreaks in the past to which have all been dealt with. The problems with infrastructure will not be addressed or largely affected by charity. In the 1980s, what ended the Ethiopian famine was politics and policy management, not charitable donation. It's not cynicism at all. It's a matter of seeing it as an economic problem or a logistical funding issue. All the people in this article have articulated that Ebola, among all other things, originates from economic problems that are heavily concerned with global ideas about Africa and power structures that maintain international relations and the market. Band Aid approaches this problem as it has all problems, as a matter of sudden burst of project funding. short-term charitable investment.
So when Abdullahi Halakhe, 33, policy analyst, says: "I think the fundamental problem with the 'saving' Africa posture is that it is predicated on the notion that Africa/Africans are agency-less, which for me is problematic because it is the continuation of never-ending paternalistic tendencies towards Africa"
Instead of telling to f**k off because he's not contributing the way we want him to, maybe we should consider that these paternalistic attitudes are ones taken by global financial institutions that tell Kenya to save money and don't invest in the things mentioned in the previous repel or risk having IMF loans pulled.
Instead of f**k off to Robtel Neajai Pailey, we should figure out what she's saying with: "We got this, Geldof, so back off." If you really want to help, buy a gazillion CDs of the two songs and send them to your friends as stocking stuffers with a note that says: "African solutions to African problems". Instead of trying to remain relevant, Geldof and co. would do well to acknowledge the ingenuity of local artists and stop trying to steal the limelight!
Maybe instead of buying more music from artists we know there should be significant corporate venture into the development of musical talent and expansion of the music industry for continental Africa, which probably is affected by western markets presuming there nothing in these countries but war and poverty and that something like music and Twitter can't possibly exist for the general population. Take note, that this Band Aid shit will become the mainstream view of music dedicated to this Ebola crisis, so yes, she has a point when she says her nation's artists will be relegated to the margins and have their realistic and experienced music pushed off to the side where these superstars can benefit spouting their imaginary drivel. Because remember, the margin they push African artists to means less industry for the nations that make them.
What of Hadiyya Mwapachu who says, "Western complicity within global relations of power is also unmentioned. There is a movement underway in Guinea that uses popular culture, traditional art forms and the radio to deconstruct stigma and raise awareness about Ebola. There are similar projects in Liberia and Nigeria. These efforts are the transformative ones."
That rather than piling more money, we should reevaluate our culture and politics before committing to anymore action. That maybe we should use our western democracies to analyze the authoritarian use of power and control we have in our relations with these weaker nations and we need to take a long hard look in the mirror as a country and see how we profit off of the disadvantages that inadvertently made this outbreak of Ebola unmanageable.
Patrick Bond serves up the same set of solutions claiming:
"The political problem with these celebrity bashes, including the most recent legacy of Live 8 and its Make Poverty History allies just over nine years ago, is that dazzling, back-slapping performances resulted in lost focus when it came to structural power. Because the emphasis on charity doesn't address economic injustice and neoliberalism, the celebs' superficiality allowed a dubious "Africa Rising" narrative to emerge in fast-growing West Africa, especially Liberia and Sierra Leone. GDP growth through extraction makes these countries poorer in terms of not only broadly measured wealth, but also the society's ability to contend with health and welfare crises."
These people aren't cynics. They're educated local experts expressing the day-to-day struggles they have in trying to implement long term development and real change. If they say Band Aid will do more harm then good, so be it..
AFGM: Please name an African artist who would be willing to donate their time and money and who are responsible for selling multi-platinum albums such as the artists listed in the songs? I think people have to remember that this song (and remakes) were created for 'Westerners' to listen to and donate, hence the need for artists who would be easily recognizable.
If people want African artists, then give a call to Salif Keita, Youssou N’dour, Angélique Kidjo, Bank W, Innocent Ujah Idibia, or Koffi Olomide and have them prove us wrong. I don't believe anyone was knocking their musical skills when they gave Bono a call, but I have to be honest that most of those names listed above were not known to me until I did some research.
Aaron: That's another problem with the power structures of global market. Music is largely controlled by western standards and tastes which leads to the immediate promotion of Americanization, which recently has faced its backlashes, as well as Eurocentric value placements that deny expansion of a powerful industry into other markets for talent if that talent doesn't serve to the tastes of Western cultures. You won't name a single African artist who can be as relevant to us as Chris Martin from Coldplay because our markets don't give us much access to famous Liberian rappers.
We are a culturally incestuous market and Band Aid proves it because rather than the real art produced by those who suffered it, consumers would rather by what they know. But is it better to sell a quarter of the album to charity while promoting the growth and expansion of a cultural industry by introducing a market with powerful purchasing power to new artists, or is it better to sell millions upon millions of albums, send a portion of the proceeds to Ebola charities, and have almost zero long-term gains? It matters on what kind of "help" you actually want to contribute to.
AFGM: Music is not controlled by western standards as most music did not derive from North America but more of the places where they originally colonized from. Drum beats originated from historic Africa, strings evolved from ancient Mesopotamia, symphonies originated in 11th-15th century Europe, etc.
Forward to modern day marketing and global activity, the music industry is equally successful in many other countries around the world that give not influence or critique to Americanization. Black metal is doing just fine on its own in Norway, or the China Philharmonic Orchestra touring around the world (including North America) without any support, influence, or marketing from Western investors, etc.
Unless I am missing the point here, music is a universal language that has been used for war AND peace. So what if Geldof, Bono, and the rest of the clan want to record a song and donate the proceeds to a worthy cause? It's not like they just fly to Africa and hand a cheque to a local villager and say "here, we did this for you". They will take necessary funds to purchase goods and services such as vaccines and medicine to administer to people in need of said materials.
I understand that North America (coughamericacough) plays a great deal as world police and governing the world according to their standards, but global aid is a completely separate issue. We [as the general public] help those at home just as much as we do overseas. People want to criticize government implementation and action then by all means go ahead. But when the average Joe doesn't read into history of world politics such as you (and even myself on a minor extent), they see a cause worthy of a few bucks possibly to help feed, nourish, and aid someone else less fortunate than them. This isn't a hierarchy system. This is even a messiah complex here, this amounts to basic philosophical principals of helping your fellow man.
Musical artists that I listed above BTW have a great reputation and following in their home countries who have been very successful as artists. Should we start pulling someone like Akon out of the picture because he is a Western successful artist?
"Instead of telling to fuck off because he's not contributing the way we want him to" was not the point I was trying to make here. Much like the article, it was taken out of context for a better case. We are quick (as a human race) to criticize versus provide a better solution. This is sociology playing a part here. The fact that I could not see where is criticism ended and his solution began was possibly my fault. I did not see a solution that would raise funds as quickly or in the same amounts.
I assume people that use Twitter can in fact come from impoverished nations and that wasn't the point here. "You won't name a single African artist who can be as relevant to us as Chris Martin from Coldplay because our markets don't give us much access to famous Liberian rappers."
Welcome to the golden age of the internet where you can discover ANY artist at ANY time.
If you want to refer to the millions of Americans who follow Miley Cyrus, Jay/Beyonce-Z, One Direction, or people that are 'all about that bass', then yes I agree that puts a stigma/stain on the pants of North American culture. However, you should know that a majority of uneducated folks do not represent the entire population. Let's put it this way, a fair amount of musicians I have spoken with in interviews who actually have a background in music theory and history do not condone or promote those artists previously stated.
Aaron: It's true, people do just fine. But the question here isn't how music generates its own economic sustainability within their own borders. Nigerians know Nigerian music, but Brazilians, Japanese, south Koreans all know Metallica. They all know the Beatles. Elton John has a pocket in the mainstream there. In regards to the mainstream, the how many Brazilian acts do we know? Sepultura? If any aspect of the music industry has been serious about the alleviation of poverty in Africa its been the factors that have tried to help independent cultural industries to give African nations more access to western consumers. It is unchallenged the the G8 nations constitute some of the largest purchasing power in their general populations and any real attempt to help an economic situation through the arts is to open up that market. Which very few have done. It's not a matter of pulling this artist or that one from the airwaves, but the most powerful companies and institutions are from the Europe and the US. Band Aid is just the products of those European and American institutions displaying their power (ability to make profits, marketing, audience share).
As for charity being a separate issue from governing the world and world policing, all things are interconnected. And as much as, from the perspective of the average person who doesn't spend all their free time reading, helping your fellow man isn't wrong on paper, but how it plays out into the movements people support, the logistical problems with what they inadvertently empower needs to be something they're wary of. Like my previous examples with Uganda, many of the organizations linked to the rise of anti-gay violence in Uganda function off the same idea of helping people. But even the key speakers who promoted those ideals in Uganda have admitted to not foreseeing the coming violence.
AFGM: This might be speaking out of turn but I hope the author of this article, Barry Malone, donated any potential profits from this article to any of the numerous causes in Africa. Because it would appear to be trafficking in human misery/cynicism if he didn't. Were still talking about perception right?
Aaron: Is it an act of profit mongering to give people an avenue to express their opinions to an audience that rarely hears them to a point where the first cultural presumption is that since they use Twitter they aren't the real voices of African people? That they should go and give money to Ebola patients right away instead of living it rich on their phones? If the BBC reports on the striking of textile workers for better wage in Cambodia, is the author of that report contributing to a cause by letting it be known, or is the author profit-mongering off of the misery of textile workers? If CNN does a report on Russian sex traffic do they owe the profits from whatever stream of revenue they get from the article to women's shelter's across the world? Or is that the role of the news, to let situations be known in full, and to put out the counter claim to potentially disastrous popular myths?
AFGM: Would that necessarily be a bad thing? If you are reporting disasters and atrocities, wouldn't lead by example be there best solution?
Aaron: The only reason I focus on all of us to critically analyze the economic and political situation of our times is because in the past Ebola has struck. But the most disastrous outbreak occurs in an environment where anti-western sentiments are on the rise, American political power is being questioned, and most importantly when economic inequality is expanding on a global scale. There is zero economy in the global market that is stabilizing the growth of inequality within its general population. The Ebola outbreak was an economic and cultural problem before it was a medical crisis. People will do more help contributing their ideas to that conversation and generating the movement to critique everything we've done economically than we will listening to music and making bob Geldof relive his past.
AFGM: So are we to blame countries who promote music on a higher level for having bigger access to the world? Are we to assume to Metallica is known in other countries because we forced it down their throats rather than the fact they actually enjoyed the pioneers of a new genre?
Because countries such as Canada, US, Sweden, Norway, and Japan have a more stable economy that can focus it's efforts more on the arts than others, are we to assume that this is the reason why artists in Nigeria are not getting worldwide coverage? Can we stop for a moment and think that the music styles and traditional cultural music they create just might not be something we are interested in listening to?
Sepultura has my respect, but their music is not my style. Charlie Brown Jr is my take and is actually the one of the biggest selling artists in Brazil. They have a very small percentage of the market in North America.
Aaron: We didn't force it down there throats more than we already had markets ready to accept the genre. Metallica was a band following the market legacies opened by western music industry institutions, and there's no doubt in my mind that in certain aspects direct political domination. The Philippines is among one of the largest consumers of American cultural goods in Asia along with South Korea and Japan, and all three have had a long history with American intervention, military conflict/occupation and have all translated into market participation. The fact that heavy metal is a prominent form of subversion in Iran and Hong Kong is also indicative of North America's capacity to disseminate its brand of culture.
And coming from the guy who's musical tastes are as eclectic as Louisiana french creole zydeco, you have to wonder why even you were unaware of many popular African musicians. That's a symptom of the artistic limitations of our current market models for the proliferation of music, which as you pointed out, has a game changer in the internet to which I would say has not been tapped as well as it could be if artists wanting to be charitable were serious about changing Africa. The real logistical problem of course is the fact that the native languages of these artists may force them to speak French, English, Portuguese, or Spanish in order to reach a broader audience. Which brings me to the next part...
Becoming a significant industrial force in the culture industry requires more than just the power of the music industry and and so on to produce good products and the reason that goes unsaid coincides with the fact that the countries who push the most outward in the culture industry have had enormous political power.
There is no foreign equivalent to Disney, as there is none to McDonald's, as there is none to the British/American boy band. The reason why is because the continents they went into already had open markets for the goods coming from imperial centers. American movies do well in the Philippines and so do American books because the market was opened when the educational system became one designed off the American system and made English more prominent. Am I saying we should learn Swahili? Hell nah, what I'm saying is that in terms of culture industry we need a new model of opening markets to new music. The internet can be that way, and has proven to be effective, the problem is the inherent cultural advantage of the west in cultivating the notion of what people are "interested" in.
In the end, what some of the notes on music breakdown to is the ability for African musical economies to compete with European or Canadian musical economies. There was no collection of Middle-Eastern and Central American performers coming together and making an event for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and if there was we showed our appreciation by leaving them out of the coverage. But the situation shows that the artistic playing field is as open and fair as the economic one, and since art generates wealth it's a continuation of the same barriers. The power structures imply that African markets have been opened for western industries which at times profit from the purchasing power of local African nations, while at the same time the opposite is experienced.
Almost to zero degrees.
AFGM: "The real logistical problem of course is the fact that the native languages of these artists may force them to speak French, English, Portuguese, or Spanish in order to reach a broader audience."
Even though this is a fraction of the overall pie, Rammstein is one of the largest bands on the planet, and especially in North America. They use one of the most difficult pronunciation (and by stigma, frowned upon culturally at times) languages on the planet, although I am not sure if their dialect is east or west German.
Aaron: East
AFGM: I am not negating the fact that North American culture has touched all points of the globe and with reason of a stable economy, profiting off the back of the misfortune (which I have a feel you were leaning towards) of others, and by shoving it down their throats thanks to propaganda and vast mediums of media (whether print, online, radio, visual, etc). So would a better solution be to take profits from "Do They Know Its Christmas", and invest them into a broader music culture in hopes they can equally share in these philanthropy campaigns?
"There was no collection of Middle-Eastern and Central American performers coming together and making an event for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and if there was we showed our appreciation by leaving them out of the coverage"
Too many variables to answer that one properly. And by that, I cannot say whether people didn't want to help, a result of a pompous country who didn't require intervention, or the fact that spin control of media would drive the consensus of Americans needing help from other countries who are potentially worse off than they are. I am not sure. Any light to shed?
I think as a continental whole, focusing on the lack of worldly African musicians is less of a cause then focusing on physiological needs of the people. "You don't need vaccines, you need music!"
At a basic level of human needs, people need help. Assuming an entire country doesn't need intervention because 'they got it' is as equivocal as me stating all Canadians like Nickelback because they are the biggest seller in our market. I am not sure if that comparison translates to you but it works in my head here. (haha)
I would hope and assume that if the tables were turned, I would be grateful for any help that comes my way, whether or not it was in the form of a recording song.
Aaron: The focus should be genuine aid. We have a tendency to only give a damn when its a crisis. But the worker strikes we never support about the shitty conditions are part of the same conditions that make the crisis management impossible locally.
If Bob Geldof wanted a real message from Band Aid, take the musicians put there music out there in a reversal of the tradition to commemorate the humanitarian ideal he's been striving for. What a better show of African prosperity than African singing about their experiences through the backing of the Band Aid institution? And the focus on African musicians isn't the entirety of the issue, but representative of the whole itself. Vaccines are having a backlash movement in Africa because of the same anti-vaccine movements from North America are finding gullible markets in places with high Aids pandemics and giving local populations different solutions.
It's not a simple matter of helping your fellow man as equals, the problem they're focusing on is the fact that it is far from being equals. From the markets, to the arts, to the economies, all boiling down to this central article of discussion, it has been more like an overbearing father to a grown formerly abused child. We view it as charity and kindness, they view it as more of the same while expressing the problems with our behaviour we choose to ignore that has direct impact on their lives.
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The kick of it all in the end is that it stemmed from a conversation from two friends. I like to value to my articles on research, merit, and constructive criticism. Most articles usually involve quick music facts, videos, etc. That all consumes time editing and layout more than anything else. This debate challenged my own perception about music, my history, knowledge, and made me feel like I learned something after it all. I mean, you'd have to be a fool not to.
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