{"id":50536,"date":"2025-01-27T08:47:26","date_gmt":"2025-01-27T08:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-january-27-2025-musical-activism-we-are-the-world\/"},"modified":"2025-01-27T08:47:26","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T08:47:26","slug":"americanstudies-january-27-2025-musical-activism-we-are-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=50536","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: January 27, 2025: Musical Activism: \u201cWe Are the World\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

[Forty
\nyears ago this week, the musical supergroup USA (United Support of Artists) for Africa<\/a> recorded
\ntheir single \u201cWe are the
\nWorld<\/a>\u201d (it would drop on March 7th<\/sup>). So this week I\u2019ll
\nAmericanStudy that effort and other examples of musical activism!]<\/p>\n

Three individuals
\nwho together embody the serious and silly sides of musical activism.<\/span><\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Harry
\nBelafonte<\/a>: By the mid-1980s, Harry
\nBelafonte<\/a> had been an iconic presence on both the cultural and political
\nlandscape for decades; indeed, as I discovered in researching this
\ncolumn on Vietnam Veterans Against the War<\/a>, it\u2019s hard to find a social
\nmovement and cause from the second half of the 20th<\/sup> century that didn\u2019t
\nfeature Belafonte\u2019s activism in a significant way. So it shouldn\u2019t be a
\nsurprise (even though I didn\u2019t realize it until researching this post) that the
\noriginal idea for USA for Africa came from Belafonte\u2014inspired by the British
\nsupergroup Band Aid<\/a> and their single \u201cDo They Know It\u2019s Christmas?\u201d (1984),
\nin early 1985
\nBelafonte reached out<\/a> to a number of prominent American musical artists to
\ncreate a fundraising single for African famine relief. With its superstar
\nlineup it\u2019s easy to see \u201cWe Are the World\u201d as more musical than activist, but
\nBelafonte\u2019s role certainly reminds us that it was fundamentally the latter. <\/span><\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michael Jackson<\/a>:
\nOne of the first musicians that Belafonte enlisted to create the single was
\nalso the biggest superstar in the world at that moment. Michael Jackson wasn\u2019t
\nBelafonte\u2019s first call, partly due to industry connections\u2014Belafonte\u2019s manager Ken
\nKragen<\/a> reached out to a pair of his clients, Lionel Ritchie and Kenny
\nRogers; and Ritchie then contacted Stevie Wonder, whom he knew well. But when the
\nlegendary
\nQuincy Jones<\/a> was brought in to produce the song, he suggested Jackson, and
\nas you might expect once the King of Pop was involved it more or less became
\nhis show. He offered to co-write the song with Ritchie, and the songwriting and
\ninitial recordings ended up happening in
\nJackson\u2019s bedroom<\/a> at the family home in Encino. Obviously the song\u2019s
\nactivist goals remained throughout these stages, but I would say the involvement
\nand then the prominence of Jackson did reflect a definite shift toward the
\nmusical side of the equation. <\/span><\/p>\n

3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Dan
\nAckroyd<\/a>: When it came time to record the song that musical side ended up
\nincluding a veritable who\u2019s who of mid-1980s musical royalty, from Ray Charles
\nto Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper to Bruce Springsteen, Waylon Jennings to five of
\nMichael Jackson\u2019s siblings. But eagle-eyed observers of the resulting music
\nvideo noticed a very different kind of mid-80s star in the background, the comedian
\nand actor (and, yes, musical
\nperformer<\/a>) Dan Ackroyd (fresh off the blockbusting success of 1984\u2019s Ghostbusters<\/a><\/i>).
\nAs the first hyperlinked story above notes, Ackroyd\u2019s participation in \u201cWe Are
\nthe World\u201d was entirely random, the result of the actor and his father walking
\ninto a management office for utterly different reasons but at precisely the right
\ntime. Again Ackroyd did have a musical career which I\u2019m not trying to downplay,
\nbut I would nonetheless argue that his presence in the recording session
\nreflects how an earnest activist effort can gradually morph into something a
\nbit more celebrity-driven and, as a result, something somewhat sillier. <\/span><\/p>\n

Next
\nmusical activism tomorrow,<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben<\/span><\/p>\n

PS. What
\ndo you think? Activisms you\u2019d highlight?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Forty years ago this week, the musical supergroup USA (United Support of Artists) for Africa recorded their single \u201cWe are the World\u201d (it would drop on March 7th). So this week I\u2019ll AmericanStudy that effort and other examples of musical activism!] Three individuals who together embody the serious and silly sides of musical activism. 1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[14104,13299,3805,751,2379],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-50536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-activism","tag-americanstudies","tag-january","tag-musical","tag-world"],"yoast_head":"\nAmericanStudies: January 27, 2025: Musical Activism: \u201cWe Are the World\u201d - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=50536\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"AmericanStudies: January 27, 2025: Musical Activism: \u201cWe Are the World\u201d - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[Forty years ago this week, the musical supergroup USA (United Support of Artists) for Africa recorded their single \u201cWe are the World\u201d (it would drop on March 7th). 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