“Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, Band Aid’s 1984 charity anthem, has come under fire online for continuing to perpetuate “racist” and “patronising” stereotypes about Africa nearly 40 years after it was released.
The song was co-written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure in response to a devastating famine in Ethiopia that was at the time described by the BBC as the “closest thing to hell on Earth”.
Between 300,000 and 1.2 million people died and an estimated 200,000 children were orphaned, with British news reports — and a publicity campaign by the stars involved — instigating a public response in the UK and across the world.
Geldof and Ure’s iconic carol quickly became a hit, selling an estimated 2.5 million copies by January 1985. Geldof said he hoped it would raise £70,000 ($132,300) for Ethiopia; within a year, it had raised £8 million ($15.1 million).
But in recent years, several writers and commentators have criticised the song, saying its lyrics have aged poorly or simply were problematic in the first place.
Writer Indrajit Samarajiva, for instance, slammed the classic as a “terrible, racist song”.
“It’s not just that these lyrics haven’t aged well. They were never good at all,” he wrote.
“They take an ignorant and colonial attitude, more about making white people feel good than helping anyone.”
Perhaps the greatest criticism has been the generalisations made by Geldof and Ure — as well as Boy George, George Michael, Sting and Bono, who were among the 30 artists that contributed — projecting devastating famine conditions not only to the whole of Ethiopia but to the entire African continent.
In fact, the song makes no explicit reference to Ethiopia at all.
For instance, the lyrics: “There won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time. The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life.
“Where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow. Do they know it’s Christmastime at all?”
“I mean, this is all wrong. It does snow in Africa, although not a lot,” Mr Samarajiva wrote in response.
Similarly, Nigerian Igbo British writer Ije Teunissen-Oligboh spoke of the discomfort she felt as a British person growing up amid peak hype for the Christmas classic.
“The intention is a great one and should be lauded rather than criticised, but the execution was appalling and helped to perpetuate stereotypes and misinformation,” she wrote.
“The discomfort I felt as a child watching the single’s music video alongside my predominantly white friends in school assemblies was unnecessary and avoidable … I struggled to articulate to peers that the images they were seeing in the video weren’t an accurate representation of an entire continent.”
The song has been re-recorded and re-released several times, including in 2014 in a bid to raise funds to curb the ebola outbreak in West Africa.
For that version, several of the criticised lyrics were removed or significantly toned down, though it’s not usually the version that plays on the radio.
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Even Geldof and Ure have admitted their lyrics were in poor taste, though generally assert that the fundraising efforts eclipsed their missteps.
In 2010, Geldof told The Daily Telegraph: “I am responsible for two of the worst songs in history” — “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and his other charity ballad, “We Are The World”.
Ure, for his part, made the following assessment in his autobiography: “It is a song that has nothing to do with music. It was all about generating money … The song didn’t matter: the song was secondary, almost irrelevant.”
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2023-12-25 08:56:28Z
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