Go ahead, document your tumultuous love life in a blog. Change your music to fit your mood, and while you’re at it, post every picture you’ve ever taken. It’s OK; you won’t be alone. Consider it your civic duty.
Myspace.com has organized 20 concerts featuring various bands as part of a campaign to raise awareness and money for humanitarian relief in Sudan. All concerts will take place in various cities across the nation on Oct. 21 and a portion of ticket proceeds will go to Oxfam’s Sudan Crisis Relief and Rehabilitation Fund.
Sounds like a worthy cause for an artist to take on, right? Black artists should be lined up to perform, right?
Well, not exactly. Oddly enough, with the exception of Ziggy Marley, there are no black musicians on the roster.
Maybe all of our beloved rap and R&B artists are busy that day reserving their 2010 Maybach spaceship.
Or more realistically, maybe they’re just sorry and have no regard for what’s really going on outside the gates of their rented MTV cribs.
In Sudan, an estimated 2.5 million people are homeless. At least 400,000 people have been killed since hostilities between the Sudanese government and rebel groups erupted. According to the BBC, each week 2,500 people die as villages are burned and food becomes more scarce.
Although the United Nations has declined to do so, the U.S. government and mass media have described the conflict as both “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.”
So click away, you’d actually be doing just as much as many of your favorite musicians.
Alaythia C. Burkins for the Editorial Board.