Just a short note.
With Apple trying to be Facebook and MySpace combined, and Facebook trying to be MySpace, and MySpace, well, just trying to stay alive these days, it reminds me of how much music and politics are intertwined. (And big business, but we already knew that. And we also knew that music choice plays an important role in political image -- can you say Republican Country Western and not Rock and Roll?)
So instead of raging against censorship, or celebrities that push a cause as a public relations ploy, I'll simply applaud the continuing efforts of Bono from U2. Yes, this is a plug for Bono. I like U2, always have, but I respect Bono. He isn't just involved in political action for the glory or headlines. He really cares about issues.
The latest event is U2's recent concert in Istanbul. Turkish fans online and at that concert were quite upset at Bono's meeting with the Prime Minister and State Minister Egemen Bağış, but Bono realizes that bridge building involves more than rages against the machine. In this case, he received boos from the crowd when he thanked the minister for "helping his band fulfill its dream of walking on the Bosphorus Bridge between two continents, Asia and Europe". Despite this, his dedication of a song to Fehmi Tosun, who had disappeared while in state custody, reminded fans, subliminally, that not only was he and the band for human rights, (after all, they mentioned Tosun on their 1997 album "Pop"), but bridges of all kinds need to be created in order to bring about positive change.
"Then came the surprising moment: Turkish protest singer, columnist and one-time Istanbul mayoral candidate Zülfü Livaneli was invited to the stage to sing a similar elegy. Bono joined Livaneli to sing “Yiğidim Aslanım Burada Yatıyor” (“My hero, the lion, lies here”), a song that was also sung during the funerals for murdered journalists and political activists during the 1990s, to a thunderous response from the crowd." --hurriyet daily news
The evening had more in store and all and all, we should be thankful that some rich, famous people, in the even unliklier form of a rock star, are willing to fight the good fight -- and build bridges so that real change can happen.
For the full story please see,
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=politics-on-focus-at-u2s-unforgettable-istanbul-show-as-usual-2010-09-07
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