There's no time to be afraid....

It's Christmastime....
Walk into any city centre shop and the usual Christmas music is playing on repeat...

A superb idea was added to the SLN Geography Forum earlier today by Andrew Boardman. It's to take the lyrics of Band Aid: Do they know it's Christmas ?, and to reappraise them, and assess their accuracy to what 'Africa' is actually like... Will there really be "no snow in Africa this Christmas" ? or "no water flowing" ?
The original single was released in 1984, with another version Band Aid 20 in 2004: 20 years on. Were the lyrics of the remake any better ?



The original video can be seen here, thanks to YouTube....



The World Development Movement have already criticised the lyrics (some years ago now) for their portrayal of African communities, and the apparent 'reasons' for poverty.

This is a nice way in to the portrayal of places in the media, and how the choice of images can influence opinion: something that OSOCIO is always challenging.

Other resources worth checking include a minute by minute reminder of the LIVE AID concert that followed the single, in 1985...
Any other song lyrics that could be examined in this way ?

Comments

Anonymous said…
Nice post.

The 2004 version was actually the third version.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_They_Know_It's_Christmas%3F#Further_releases
December 19, 2008 at 12:37 AM
Alan Parkinson said…
Thanks for that Mark !
I'd forgotten the Hit Factory version...
December 19, 2008 at 8:59 AM
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