46664 - The CDs / DVDs
46664 is a live concert that took place at Green Point Stadium, Cape Town in November 2003 to launch a new initiative endorsed by Nelson Mandela to highlight the human catastrophe that is HIV/AIDS. First let me confess to the bias that might descend. I love Cape Town. I spend time there every other year and the opening panoramic shot of table Mountain, The Lions Head, Signal Hill and Table Bay bring an emotional wetness to my eyes. To add to that I have nothing but utter admiration for Nelson Mandela. He is without doubt the greatest human being alive today. I am left staggered at his grace and humility, how he forgave his oppressor and has led not only South Africa but the entire world in an example of how to treat your enemy. Finally I am an advocate for music being about more than entertainment. It might not be able to change the world but it should be used in whatever ways possible to give it a darn good lash; I do though have a sneaking feeling that it can! Nothing brings me closer to swearing than snivelling little rock journalists giving out about rock stars involving themselves in saving the world as if musical gifts were given to humanity so that they could be prostituted for sex, fashion and hedonistic materialism!
Where 46664 – The Event could have fallen out of favour with my subjective tastes was in the line up. Much as I am a fan of Bohemian Rhapsody I have prejudice against Queen, only surrendering to the purchase of their Greatest Hits collection as a library resource. The Corrs are a little middle of the road. Peter Gabriel is a little bit prog. The Eurythmics are okay but nothing to get excited about. Beyonce and Anastacia are too mainstream. World music has never won my heart though my head has huge admiration. Against that Bono and The Edge is at the heart of things and loom large in my lunchtime legend and Bob Geldof is to music what Mandela is to politics; a statesman to be honoured even if the Boomtown Rat’s language is a Dublin shade of deepest blue!
Where 46664 differs from other concerts of its type is that this was not a gig-fest where you take the best selling acts of the day and give them all their fifteen minutes of charity. This is more perfectly planned. The bill is cleverly thought through with the old players alongside the younger chart toppers and the Africans alongside the westerners and Jamaicans and a few South Africans thrown in to bring the whole thing back home! Once the bill is set down there are songs written for the event, fascinating collaborations and intriguing cross fertilisation of genres. The Soweto Gospel Choir deserve a special mention with their constant presence but particularly their Bohemian Rhapsody.
Of musical highlights the song 46664 (Long Walk To Freedom) is a catchy piece of writing and is the late Joe Strummer’s last song co-written with Bono and the event’s main musical force Dave Stewart. Building line upon line to the title of Mandela’s biography there are a few great couplets no better than “six waves might break in the Bay but the seventh one reaches the shore.” That the concert takes place a few hundred yards from that shore with Robben Island a few miles out adds to the power.
This song gives us one of the two most powerful emotional moments. As Bono gets the crowd in a sing-a-long groove of the long walk to freedom refrain Mandela himself right on cue takes faltering steps with the aid of a stick across the stage to the podium. It is a beautiful soundtrack to an inspired walk. This is a concert of victorious celebration as well as tragedy and challenge. It is a fully realised follow up to the Mandela concerts at Wembley in 1988 and 1990 when rock music joined with political lobbies to free Mandela and the entire black population of South Africa. Here we all are almost a decade after democracy had been won. To see the reality of such an achievement helped empower the belief needed that now apartheid had been vanquished we could do the same to the next great enemy of this beautiful people – HIV/AIDS. When Mandela begins his speech that follows to a mixed race Cape Town crowd with “Comrades and friends” to a huge united cheer – goodness me!
Which takes us to that other eye filling moment of the night. One of the first songs that caught my attention and sent me looking to what was going on in South Africa was Peter Gabriel’s tribute to Stephen Biko killed in police custody in 1977. Gabriel introduces it by saying that it has been a long time coming but at last he can sing it for the first time in the land it was written about. Twenty five years later history is being tied up; a reminder how far the 40,000 people gathered have come.
As well as the political the air is rife with the spiritual. From the outset Bob Geldof describes what is to come as everybody’s Redemption Song with a cover of Bob Marley. Jamaican Abdel Wright takes up the mantle of his fellow country man, Marley, charging the Church for “using the name of Christ for hypocrisy/how can you say come follow me/when deep down you’re living so indecently.” Andrea Corr’s vocal to Brian May’s acoustic on Is This The World We Created is hymn-like and when during Amandla this young boy called Andrew Bonsu prays that in the name of Jesus we would over come all that the devil has planned for the world it is almost like Church.
Bono and Beyonce, those with a more than vocal Christian faith are giving the Amen a whole lot of Dixie behind him. It is their song American Prayer that brings the Church into the proceedings directly as Bono speaks about the incongruity that those of faith seem to always be the most judgemental and asks that the Church would open up and become a sanctuary for those dealing with the HIV/AIDS stigma; the gist of the song being that American prayer would grow hands and feet and hearts and bring spiritual energy this campaign.
The campaign is never lost in the fun and brilliance of the music. Beyonce tells the young women to take care of themselves. Ms Dynamite is less innocent and asks that they would love themselves enough to seek protection in love. The strand that links the entire bill are songs written by Dave Stewart and Roger Taylor, new songs full of sadness and hope, calling for action. The immediate action is to respond to the initiative they are launching. 46664 was the prison number assigned to Nelson Mandela on Robben Island. Used here it demands that none of us treat those chained to the HIV/AIDS virus as just numbers and statistics. It is chanted throughout the gig, a stadium anthem to send people home to the computer to check out the web site and any other means that can be used to fight HIV/AIDS.
The DVD adds short documentary films about HIV/AIDS, the making of the concert and there are twelve one minute movies done by artists. The message is too crucial not to be over emphasised. When you see Annie Lennox meeting Mandela with 17 MILLION DEAD on her t-shirt the reality hits home. Suddenly numbers and statistics are given flesh and the horror has to ask us what are we going to do about the greatest human tragedy the world has ever known.
These musicians are giving us the inspiration, the launch pad to make the difference. At the end the horrific tale of Gabriel’s Biko he finishes with the words “and as always the rest is up to you…” Too true. Here’s an album of quality entertainment with a prophetic kick running through it.
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