Article

Christmas culture

Culture

Development

Music

19 December 2024

6 min read

Band Aid: that song, that question

What’s so funny about generosity, kindness and compassion?

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Pop stars sing together while recording a charity single.

Recording the original Band Aid track.

Sometimes a three-minute pop song really can change lives. I should know because 40 years ago a Radio One DJ played a song that changed my life.

I was 12 years old, growing up in relative comfort in Brighton, when I heard the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid play for the first time on the radio. I remember being moved by the lyrics:

"There's a world outside your window, and it's a world of dread and fear, where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears."

As I reflected on the song, I was overwhelmed by the great inequalities in the world. I had food on the table every day, while people in other parts of the world were struggling to survive without even the most basic of necessities. I had felt so desperate watching Michael Buerk’s TV reports of children suffering in the devastating “biblical” famine in Ethiopia: suddenly, with this song, I was struck by the realisation that perhaps there was something I could do to make a difference, after all.

As a child, I did what Bob Geldof encouraged me to do: I bought the single, wore the T-shirt, and contributed some of my pocket-money. But it didn’t stop there. As Band Aid turned into Live Aid - a global concert featuring my then favourite band, U2 - I felt that the direction of my life was shifting also. I began to ask questions about what I wanted to do with my life and where I could be most effective in tackling global injustice and inequality.

I still find myself asking the same questions today, as well as an additional one – has my life over the past 40 years made the difference I wanted it to make? This is exactly the challenge being put to Band Aid. As the world remembers the fortieth anniversary of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” with the re-release of the single, could it have fresh impact on a new generation, and was it even effective the first time around?

There are important lessons to learn from Band Aid about whether such initiatives are the intended impact, but often the critiques quickly become excuses not to get involved. I’d like to look at three of those critiques to see if there is any truth in them – and if they can provoke us into doing more, not less, for the cause of global security in general, and international child welfare in particular.

I might not agree with everything about the song, but I certainly believe in the power of guitars over guns. I’d rather see meaningful music influence our world than military force any day.

The first is that the way Africa is portrayed is more harmful than helpful.

While well-intentioned, the depiction of Africa in the Band Aid song, and to be honest, in most charity fundraisers for causes within Africa, has served to perpetuate harmful stereotypes. They paint an oversimplified, monolithic image of Africa as a place of unrelenting despair and degradation, with images of starving children that are supposed to stick in our minds – and do.

Hans Rosling, in his book Factfulness, surveyed global perceptions of Africa and found that most people vastly overestimate the level of poverty. Because media and charity campaigns rarely show the thriving urban centres, technological advancements, or educated professionals that also define Africa, we are given a one-dimensional narrative that actually dehumanizes African people and perpetuates an “us vs. them” mindset where the West are depicted as saviours to helpless African victims.

The truth is far more nuanced. Yes, poverty and tragedy exist, but Africa is also home to modern skyscrapers in cities like Lagos, bustling malls in Nairobi, and world-class stadiums in South Africa. Despite underestimating the development of Africa, we should also be careful of measuring success on how many modernised metropoles we can find there. I have been to villages in Uganda, some far off the beaten track, which, while appearing relatively impoverished on the surface, are deeply rich in culture and community. They are aspirational in many ways, where children grow up in the security that extended family can offer.

To portray an entire continent solely through images of suffering is neither accurate nor fair. We – I include myself – still have so much to learn, both about Africa and from the African people.

Then there’s that question. Do they know it’s Christmas? Yes, they do.

The question at the heart of the song—whether Africans know it’s Christmas—has always been problematic. Across Africa, there are over 730 million Christians, many of whom practice their faith with vibrant passion. Not only do they know it’s Christmas, but in many cases, their faith is lived out more actively than by their fellow Christians in Western nations.

Christians across Africa are often at the forefront of societal change, leading in politics, science, and development. From presidents to Nobel Prize winners, their work is rooted in faith and a commitment to their communities. Suggesting otherwise is not only inaccurate but also dismissive of their contributions.

The question needs to be turned back on ourselves: do we know it’s Christmas? Have we added so much tinsel, glitter, sentimentality and consumerism to Christmas that we have lost sight of the incarnation at the heart of the Christmas story – God, seeing a broken world, sent his Son to walk alongside humanity and offer hope and redemption? Jesus crossed the greatest of cultural boundaries to become one of us and live with us, before paying the ultimate price and dying for us. If we really knew this sort of Christmas, what would this mean for the rest of our lives?

Finally, there’s the problem with the white saviour complex.

Recent critiques, including Ed Sheeran’s reflections on his involvement in charity work, have highlighted the dangers of the “white saviour complex.” This isn’t just about race—it’s about the mindset that Westerners so often have – that we bring the solutions because those in developing nations lack the knowledge, experience, or ability to help themselves.

Sheeran himself faced backlash for trying to assist street children during a Comic Relief project, inadvertently causing harm despite good intentions. Imposing solutions from the outside often overlooks the complexities of local contexts and risks reinforcing imbalances of power. Sometimes our good intentions lead to bad interventions. Sometimes they exacerbate problems that were historically caused by the Western nations in the first place - colonialism, resource exploitation, and the arbitrary drawing of borders, for example.

This cannot be an excuse to do nothing. This is a vital lesson in collaborating better with our African counterparts before we dare to suggest ways forward. “Nothing about us without us” is a principle many modern charities embrace so that solutions are co-designed with the communities they aim to help, ensuring that aid empowers rather than dehumanizes.

The generosity at the heart of the Band Aid initiative, the desire to show kindness and compassion – and inspire kindness and compassion in others, was an incredible message of hope. It changed my life 40 years ago. Perhaps, as I continue my reflections, it will change my life again. I might not agree with everything about the song, but I certainly believe in the power of guitars over guns. I’d rather see meaningful music influence our world than military force any day. I don’t mind whether movements for positive change are instigated by musicians or politicians.

Most importantly for me, wherever there is conflict, I pray that the real meaning of Christmas will be discovered.

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Review

Culture

Music

Politics

25 July 2025

6 min read

As the congregation gathers Bruce Springsteen leans hard into hope

Chords of confrontation and communion

Elizabeth Wainwright

Elizabeth Wainwright is a writer, coach and walking guide. She's a former district councillor and has a background in international development.

Bruce Springsteen crouches down and holds a hand out to a sea of outstretched hands

Springsteen plays Manchester.

Brucespringsteen.net.

I finally got to experience a Bruce Springsteen concert recently. Which is to say, for three hours, I touched a land of hope and dreams.

We walked along a canal to get to the arena – my husband, my father-in-law, and me –Manchester shimmered with the arrival of summer, and light bounced off red brick and still water. We neared the arena and the air felt dense with anticipation. T Between us we carried heartbreaks, elections, hopes, failures, and a collective return to music that had accompanied and clarified it all. We were drawn by loyalty and nostalgia and joy, but also I sensed by a hope that Bruce would meet the moment — the frayed, furious, anxious now — with something that mattered.

We found our seats and gripped our drinks as the lights dimmed. Thousands of people stopped individual conversations, and hushed, and then joined voices into a deep and reverent chant. “Bruuuuuuuce”. To my right, the glow of a screen, the woman holding it sending a text – “yes babe, 1pm, lovely” – and it seemed incongruent and true. In the tension before the release, in the dark before the light, we hold our breath even as the ordinary carries on. The ordinary carries on even as the world fractures and glows. The ordinary is what Bruce often sings of, it is one reason why fans feel heard and seen by him. That night though, all the ordinaries he sang of formed something extraordinary.

Then there was light, and Bruce walked slowly from the side to the front of the stage, his guitar suspended across his body, his face a relaxed, broad smile, his bandmates and companions beside and behind him. Then there was music. No videos, no pyrotechnics; just old songs that felt as if they existed for the now. My City of Ruins, Death to My Hometown, Land of Hope and Dreams, The Promised Land. The song Long Walk Home was introduced as a “prayer to my country”. It is a country that he embodies, despairs of, and loves. He sings of his home with fury, sorrow, tenderness, and love.

Riffs and rhythms that were decades old were being made urgent again. Springsteen’s music holds both grit and glory, and hard-won joys leave space for sorrow. I write this and lines by Mary Oliver come to mind: “We shake with joy, we shake with grief / what a time they have these two / housed as they are in the same body.” What a time they had, joy and grief, that night with Bruce.

The evening unfolded not as spectacle but as liturgy; all of us involved in something like devotion – in part to Bruce, but also to moral clarity, to the power of poetry, to the promise of who we could be. At times the crowd seemed silent, ushered into something deeper – not entertainment or escapism, but something like confrontation and communion. We were being offered the joy of music and memory, but also an opportunity to reckon with who we are.

Between songs, Bruce spoke. He apparently rarely does so in his gigs. His voice slowed and deepened – not chit chat, not to entertain, but to bear witness and stand defiant and call us to the best versions of ourselves. “I’ve spent my life singing about where we’ve succeeded and come up short in pursuit of our civic values,” he said. “I just felt that was my job.” He proceeded to describe how those values are being torn apart, and why they matter. The crowd roared. He was making civic values shine, speaking about them with urgency. He acknowledged both the dream and the failure, but still he believes in the promised land and he asks us to as well. Before he belted out Rainmaker, he said, “when conditions in a country are right for a demagogue, you can bet one will show up.” He spoke of America, and really of the world – what it is, what it is becoming. His honesty and poetic rage situated us, then became a map for how to keep going.

We can be glad to be alive even while we are honest about sorrow, injustice, broken politics, fractured families, and tired hearts.

I found myself wondering: why is it that Bruce can sing and speak about justice, warped politics, and who we are becoming, and be met with cheers, while so many churches avoid doing so, preferring instead to whisper in neutral tones while the world burns? That night, I stood in a crowd of thousands and I heard a kind of moral clarity that orientates the soul and made me cry. It wasn’t partisan, it was human. Why can it feel riskier to speak specifically and prophetically in a sermon than in a stadium? I wonder if it’s because Springsteen has always rooted his politics in people’s real lives – in work, family, grief, memory. He doesn’t gesture toward abstract ideologies for fear of alienating people, or in the hope of retaining fans: he tells stories and gives names to problems and injustices, singing about crooked institutions, boarded-up factories, buses that never come, lovers who don’t come back.

The evening felt, for me, like the kind of church I long for and sometimes touch: no tidy answers, no insincere lyrics, no vague calls for justice, but rather honesty and specificity and the chance to stand alongside strangers and feel something challenging, beautiful, true.

I scribbled a question as the music soared: can a chord be mystical? Because that’s how it felt. As if there are progressions – minor then major, dissonance into harmony – that can reach past language and speak directly to the part of us that longs for love more than cynicism, to the part of us that still dares to hope even when there is very little obvious reason to do so, to the part of us wondering how to be truly alive.

Near the end, Bruce quoted the American writer James Baldwin:

“In this world, there isn’t enough humanity as one would hope. But there’s enough.”

There’s enough. It was a small phrase but it hung in the air like incense. For Bruce, there is enough humanity to keep singing for, and about. Now, he seemed to ask the crowd, what will you do with that enoughness, with that humanity?

In the final stretch, Bruce leaned hard into hope with songs like The Rising and Born to Run. The energy in the room felt like resistance – not against something, but for something. He didn’t pretend everything’s fine, but he sang anyway. “It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.”

We can be glad to be alive even while we are honest about sorrow, injustice, broken politics, fractured families, and tired hearts. Gladness is being asked to stand its ground now, and to do something with our improbable aliveness. For the final song, Bruce played Bob Dylan’s Chimes of Freedom. It is a song about lightning and exiles and freedom, about the trembling of the soul and about a sky that “cracked its poems in naked wonder.” He sang it slowly, tenderly, like a prayer – which can also be a trembling of the soul, a song of naked wonder. Perhaps he prayed to God, perhaps to some other sacred thing: our better angels, or the fragile hope of who we might yet become.

In a BBC documentary about Bruce Springsteen’s history with the UK, someone says “there’s something in Bruce fans, you know you can implicitly trust them.” As we filed out of the arena, it felt like 25,000 of us briefly knew each other, trusted each other, could take on the world together. Perhaps we just had.

Soon it was just me, my husband, my father-in-law, and the silent dark canal as we walked back into the night. We were tired, we were awake. I thought of Bruce’s belief in the promised land, and of Baldwin’s line: there’s not enough humanity, but there’s enough. These are beliefs that can feel risky. So can belief in God. But enough is plenty. Enough can turn up the volume and let the spirit be our guide. With 25,000 other people, I’d turned that volume up and I could hear the spirit defiant, unifying, guiding. It is – has always been – time to go and sing of it, despite everything.