- Person
- Bob Dylan
- Lived
- b. 1941
- Field
- Music
- From
- American
The story
In 1971, during the Bangladesh Liberation War, almost 10 million people fled from what was then East Pakistan into India, where they faced famine and diseases such as cholera. The region had already been devastated by the Bhola cyclone in 1970. The Bengali sitar player Ravi Shankar, distraught at the suffering of his homeland, asked his friend George Harrison, the former Beatle, for help.
Shankar had hoped to raise $25,000 with a modest benefit. With Harrison's involvement the idea grew into two concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York on Sunday, 1 August 1971, with Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Leon Russell and Badfinger, and an opening set of Indian classical music by Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan. More than anyone, Harrison hoped to persuade Bob Dylan to appear.
Dylan had barely performed in public for several years, and right up to the night before he would not commit. When Harrison looked down at his setlist during the first show, it simply read Bob followed by a question mark. Then Dylan walked on, visibly nervous, to the astonishment of the crowd. Backed by Harrison, Russell and Starr, he played songs that had defined the 1960s, including A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall, Blowin' in the Wind, It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry and Just Like a Woman. For many observers his short set was the crowning moment of the day, and afterwards he told Harrison he wished they had done three shows.
The two concerts drew 40,000 people and raised close to $250,000 at the gate, administered by UNICEF. A bestselling live album and a concert film followed, and by 1985 an estimated $12 million had been sent to Bangladesh. Shankar later said that in one day the whole world learned the name of Bangladesh.
It was the first benefit of such size in rock music and laid the groundwork for later events such as Live Aid. Dylan took part in that tradition again in 1985, singing on the famine relief single We Are the World and appearing at Live Aid in Philadelphia. Sales of the album and film still support the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF.
Why it matters
Dylan helped launch the tradition of rock musicians using their fame to raise money for humanitarian crises.
About Bob Dylan
Singer-songwriter; Nobel laureate in Literature for transforming American song.
More about Bob Dylan
- Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind became a civil rights anthemBob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind, released in 1963, asked whether war and injustice would ever end, and with The Times They Are a-Changin' became an anthem of the civil rights movement.
- Bob Dylan campaigned for Rubin Hurricane Carter in songIn 1975 Bob Dylan released Hurricane, an eight-minute ballad arguing that the imprisoned boxer Rubin Carter was innocent, and performed it at every date of his Rolling Thunder tour.
- Bob Dylan sang at the 1963 March on WashingtonOn 28 August 1963 Bob Dylan sang at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the day Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his I Have a Dream speech.
- Bob Dylan wrote songs about victims of racial injusticeIn 1963 and 1964 Bob Dylan wrote songs about the murder of Medgar Evers, the death of barmaid Hattie Carroll and James Meredith's ordeal integrating the University of Mississippi.
- Bob Dylan gave his Christmas album royalties to fight hungerBob Dylan donated all his royalties from his 2009 album Christmas in the Heart to Feeding America, the UK charity Crisis and the World Food Programme.
- Bob Dylan's words at Live Aid inspired Farm AidAt Live Aid in 1985, Bob Dylan suggested some of the money could help struggling American farmers, prompting Willie Nelson to organise Farm Aid for debt-ridden family farms.
- Bob Dylan's archive became a public centre in TulsaAbout 6,000 of Bob Dylan's notebooks, lyric drafts, recordings and letters were acquired for Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the Bob Dylan Center opened to the public on 10 May 2022.
Sources
- Bob Dylan Wikipedia
- The Concert for Bangladesh Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.