Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer/Autumn 2018 | Page 28

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS • VOLUME 3, ISSUE 2 • SUMMER/AUTUMN 2018
CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON MUSIC
AND HUMANITARIAN NARRATIVES
LUIS VELASCO-PUFLEAU
University of Fribourg /
Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme, Paris
Afterword by Stephanie Weber
Lenbachhaus, Munich
Introduction
On November 16, 2014, Bob Geldof appeared on the UK TV show The X-Factor
in order to present the latest version of his 1984 well-known charity song “Do
They Know It’s Christmas?” Recorded by several artists brought together for
the Band Aid 30 project, the song was produced and slightly adapted ( Jeffries 2014)
with the claimed objective of fighting the Ebola virus outbreak�described by Geldof as
“the most anti-human disease”�in several countries in West Africa. 1 Mobilising a rhetoric
of war, Geldof explained to the audience that buying a pop single can change the
world since we make things together: “We go to war, we are going to stop this thing, buy
the song.” 2
Once again, Geldof was on TV shows and the news in order to talk about charity, humanitarian
crises, death, and victims in far-off countries. Assuming a collective point
of view, he presented himself as a legitimate “humanitarian ambassador,” claiming that
“for thirty years we have been dealing with humanitarian issues in Africa.” In fact, Band
Aid 30 was the latest and recurrent version of Band Aid, first created in 1984 with the
purpose of fighting the famine caused by the 1983–1985 Ethiopian civil war, and followed
by Band Aid II in 1989, and Band Aid 20 in 2004. Moreover, Band Aid was also
the first of many similar projects in the so-called free world, such as USA for Africa and
their song “We Are The World” in the United States, and Chanteurs sans frontières with
“Chanson pour l’Éthiopie” in France. 3
1 The German version of this song was released on November 26, 2014. The French version (Noël est
là) was released on December 1, 2014, by the singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, wife of the former French
President Nicolas Sarkozy. In the context of Sarkozy’s contest for the Presidency of the French Party
Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), on December 6, 2014, the lead role of Carla Bruni-
Sarkozy in this symbolic political dispositif had a manifest propagandistic dimension.
2 Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes come from speeches included in our work Reflections on Music
and Propaganda (Velasco-Pufleau and Santamaría Borges 2017).
3 Such highly visible songs and concerts have been used to raise funds and to legitimate humanitarian
action as a response to political and economic issues in most of the media covered humanitarian
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doi: 10.18278/aia.3.2.3