Here is another motivator... other than greed that is.. Narcissim..(:)
Melding Gravity and Guilt at Live 8
By JON PARELES
LONDON, July 3 - The symmetry was clear between the Group of 8 summit meeting, which begins in Scotland on Wednesday, and Saturday's Live 8 concerts, which were staged to pressure the G-8 leaders on policies affecting Africa. The concerts took place in the eight major industrial countries represented by the group (along with a concert belatedly added in South Africa). And like the G-8 meeting, they hinged on the privileged addressing the problems of the impoverished.
How immediately effective Live 8 was will be gauged after the summit. Skeptics could discount the concerts' gigantic audience, estimated to be in the billions live and electronically, as merely a reflection of the music's popularity. But viewers absorbed some persuasive messages, balancing grim statistics with promises of solutions. Those spots, as slickly produced as any political advertising, probably reached people who hadn't thought much about Africa since the Live Aid concert raised money for famine relief in 1985.
"By the time this concert ends this evening, 30,000 Africans will have died," Brad Pitt announced here in London, then urged that "we the fortunate" stand for change.
Endorsing the program of the organization Make Poverty History, Sir Bob Geldof - who organized Live Aid and the larger, technologically upgraded Live 8 - and many of the performers called for canceling third-world debt, doubling aid and changing trade regulations to open markets for African goods. At the Philadelphia concerts, performers invoked a "declaration of interdependence."
Live 8 was not about opening ears to African culture but about maximizing the audience. It's a shame that Africa's remarkable music was barely noticed during the Live 8 marathon. The Johannesburg concert - with musicians from South Africa, Senegal and Mali - was not cybercast by AOL; neither was a hastily organized concert of African music in Cornwall, far from London, although Angelina Jolie dropped by. Youssou N'Dour, the great Senegalese singer, sang with Dido in London and Cornwall, and led his own set at the concert at Versailles, near Paris. Yet even the background music in the video clips about Africa was largely Western. More Africans should have been heard, as well as pitied, during Live 8.
But in the global pop market, the biggest names are English-speaking pop stars whose privilege transcends language barriers. The Philadelphia concert had a strong American contingent, and a vital presence for the African-American rhythm-and-blues and hip-hop that is now fueling pop innovation; and the Canadian concert ended with Neil Young. But the others leaned toward musicians who live or record in Britain.
The Cure headlined in Versailles, the Pet Shop Boys in Moscow, Bjork (who is Icelandic) in Tokyo, Roxy Music in Berlin. Flashy production, on nearly identical stage sets, sought to hold viewers long enough so they would watch video spots about Africa between songs. One spot showed emaciated Africans holding Western consumer goods as it compared the amount of proposed aid with the billions spent on cosmetics, fashion accessories, weapons and discarded computers and cellphones. Meanwhile, Live 8's corporate sponsors included Nokia and AOL (which has reruns of some concerts at www.aolmusic.com).
Visions of the 1960's, and rock songs full of peace and love - along with Bob Marley's 1970's reggae songs - are always associated with pop benefits. Sir Paul McCartney started and ended the flagship London concert with Beatles songs: not "All You Need Is Love," however, but "Helter-Skelter." Yet there was little 60's-style protest beyond an occasional stretch of a rap: "Greed is a weapon of mass destruction," Faithless rapped in Berlin. While the G-8's decisions are ultimately political, the Live 8 concerts strove to appear more technocratic than ideological. Sir Bob brought Bill Gates of Microsoft on stage in London, where Mr. Gates gave a C.E.O.-style pep talk: "Success depends on knowing what works and bringing resources to the problem. We know what to do."
The 1960's didn't have the 21st-century gadgets that dominated Live 8. (Neither, for that matter, do the many Africans who live on less than $2 a day.) "Text us, call us," Bono said to a worldwide audience from Hyde Park on Saturday afternoon as U2 opened the Live 8 concert here. "These phones, they're dangerous little devices."
He was asking viewers to send their names - a painless contribution - for a list that grew past 25 million as the group of concerts was shown on television and the Internet. Of course, petition drives don't usually come with satellite-linked serenades from million-selling rockers.
It was high-tech coalition building. At one point the rapper and actor Will Smith in Philadelphia played host as audience members at simultaneous concerts roared video-screen greetings to one another. Then he had the viewers snap their fingers at three-second intervals; in Africa, he said, an impoverished child dies every three seconds.
Against statistics like that, rock hits can sound lightweight and narcissistic - overly concerned with the preening or the romantic mishaps of people making considerably more than $2 a day. It's a rare band - U2, to be precise - that can make big booming songs sound humble as well as rousing. A few performers, like Sting, also rewrote lines of familiar songs to address the G-8: "We'll be watching you," he sang in "Every Breath You Take."
Others hoped that their love songs would double as songs of empathy. And the rest kept it to themselves if they were worried about the context. Rappers boasted, rockers flailed at their guitars, country singers honky-tonked. Parochial, frivolous, raucous and more, the songs were hits nonetheless, and performing them drew attention. That is what stars are supposed to do, as well as providing fantasies of pleasure, success, rebellion or shared trauma. Whether it was Beyoncé of Destiny's Child boasting "I'm a survivor" because an album sold millions of copies, or the Cure's Robert Smith moaning about angst, the stars provided enough media leverage to put Live 8 on all those television and computer screens.
There was narcissism, too, in those 25 million names. When transmitted online or by cellphone text, there was a chance that a sender's name would be projected on the video screens behind the stars during the Live 8 broadcast, where the names became one more graphic element. It was not only an endorsement of Make Poverty History, but a chance at 15 milliseconds of fame, one more privilege of the connected.
Perhaps narcissism is underrated. It can be a great motivator. It may have added some percentage of names to that online petition for African relief; it definitely helped put stars onstage for Live 8. And as the Live 8 concerts sought to instruct the G-8, those who have economic privilege should use it well. |
