Singing In Relief

The song Do They Know It’s Christmas was the brainchild of Irish musician Sir Bob Geldof, who was moved by reports of severe famine in the horn of Africa in 1984. He gathered a group of some of the best known British musicians and recorded the song in a day. It catapulted to the top of the charts, selling 3.7 million copies in the U.K and raising millions of dollars around the world.The following year, a concert called Live Aid raised even more money. The music and events spawned a host of similar songs and concerts around the world. 

On this Rewind, a look at some of Canada’s own disaster relief concerts. 

In the year 1950, Winnipeg was a city under siege. Rising flood waters had led to the evacuation of 100,000 residents with 10,000 homes damaged. In May of that year, CBC Radio broadcast a concert to raise money for those affected. It was called Flood the Fund and featured Canadian, American, and British actors, singers and musicians including Manitoba-born film actor Jack Carson, who was emcee of the event.

The Winnipeg-born singer and violinist Gisèle Laflèche - later known as Gisèle MacKenzie - performed at Flood the Fund. She was a regular on television’s Jack Benny Show and Your Hit Parade before hosting her own variety show for a season in 1957-58. She also had a number one hit with the song "Hard to Get".

In 1979, the CBC broadcast a three-hour prime-time coast-to-coast entertainment extravaganza to aid Vietnamese refugees. They were known as the boat people, and between 1979 and 1980, over 60,000 boat people settled in Canada. The CBC's benefit show for Vietnamese refugees was called The Boat People: Operation Lifeline. There were six separate concerts, all linked via satellite and broadcast coast to coast. Proceeds of ticket sales went toward helping refugees settle in Canada. Many Canadians were deeply touched by the plight of the boat people and came out in droves to help sponsor refugee families, providing them with food, shelter and clothing.

In 1984, a team from CBC TV travelled to Ethiopia to cover the famine there. It was the first report to North America about the starvation and civil war in Ethiopia, and was smuggled out of the country taped to the back of producer Tony Burman. Reports like one from CBC’s Brian Stewart showed horrifying pictures of starving people that shocked the world. 

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It wasn’t long after that when musician Bob Geldof leapt into action with Band Aid and his song "Do They Know It’s Christmas". Canadians followed suit with our own song and relief effort. Tears Are Not Enough was released as a single in March 1985 and sold more than 300,000 copies. In December 1985, CBC Television aired a 90-minute documentary on the "Tears Are Not Enough" recording. The project raised more than $3 million. 

In the summer of 1985, Bryan Adams was one of the few Canadian musicians invited to take part in Bob Geldof’s Live Aid, the follow up concert to Band Aid. The performers who played Live Aid formed a "who's who" of 1980's pop stardom that included David Bowie, Dire Straits, Duran Duran, Elton John, Madonna, Paul McCartney, Queen and Wham. They performed to a global audience of 1.5 billion.

In 1992, an accident at the Westray Mine in Nova Scotia killed 26 miners. The mine had only been open for a few months before the disaster. Hundreds of people were out of work as a result. About a week after the accident performers put on a show to help the families of the men killed. 

Do artists have a responsibility to do anything more than create art? That's a question that preoccupied Steven Page of the Barenaked Ladies after the September 11 attacks and the subsequent war in the Middle East. The sold-out Music Without Borders concert in Toronto helped refugees from Afghanistan, and was broadcast on CBC Television and streamed on the internet. On the same weekend there were several American concerts in support of New York City and the victims of the September 11 attacks.​

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Music has often been used to make a political point. When Neil Young released his anthemic "Rockin’ in the Free World", he was clearly writing about the foreign policies of George Bush Sr. in the late 1980s. But after 9/11, the song gained a whole new currency. 

Musicians of all stripes get into the fund raising business. In 2002, during a devastating drought in the Prairies, country artists staged two concerts that they called Say Hay. But again the question arose, who were the concerts really benefiting? 

The sentiments of appreciation for the effort, coupled with the doubt about its lasting value, was now a familiar sentiment. It proved to be the case again when Canada faced a health crisis around the infectious flu known as SARS. Toronto based MP Dennis Mills decided to book one of the biggest names in rock and roll -  The Rolling Stones - to play a concert that was dubbed Sarstock. As well as the Stones, a host of other performers including AC/DC, Rush, and The Guess Who performed at the concert.  

In 2005, a concert was organized in response to the tsunami in Asia that claimed at least 150,000 lives. It was called Canada for Asia and featured a who’s who of Canadian talent. Canada for Asia aired on CBC Television, and attracted a million viewers. More than 40,000 people called in to make pledges, raising more than $4 million. The Canadian government also committed $425 million in help.

There have been numerous other fundraising concerts over the years for B.C. wildfires, the ice storms in Ontario and Quebec, and The Pay it Forward concert in St. John's, Newfoundland to help victims of a severe flood in that province.

That brings us back to the 30th anniversary of the grand daddy of all benefit songs - Bob Geldof's "Do They Know It’s Christmas". It’s been re-released with slightly tweaked lyrics to raise money for the Ebola crisis in Africa. But it faces many of the same criticisms that the original version did in 1984 - that it’s colonial, condescending, and presents stereotypes. Nevertheless, "Do They Know It’s Christmas" is once more at the top of the charts and in fact was the fastest selling single in the U.K. for 2014. 

There's no word if there will be a Tears are not Enough reunion.