The song that changed the world

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next: Fame and fundraising.

Forty years ago this month, British citizens by the millions were buying a song by a charity supergroup known as Band Aid. The effort would go on to inspire musical relief efforts around the world.

NICK EICHER, HOST: The record was in response to shocking footage out of Ethiopia, where a devastating famine was worsening. It’s estimated that it ultimately took up to a million lives.

WORLD’S Lindsay Mast has the story of the famine, the song, and relief for the victims.

LINDSAY MAST: In December 1984, one song rules the airwaves in Britain.

LYRIC: …It’s Christmas time… there’s no need to be afraid…At Christmastime, we let in light and we banish shade…

It spends 5 weeks at Number 1 on the British charts, and four decades on, it regularly returns to them—this year it hit number 8.

The song raises a lot of money for victims of a massive famine in Ethiopia—a famine that just two months prior, had been unknown to most of the world.

The song and the momentary attention of the world began with a single BBC report on October 23rd, 1984:

BUERK: Dawn and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plane outside Korem, it lights up a Biblical famine.

It is difficult to overstate the impact that BBC journalist Michael Buerk’s report would have around the world. It showed scores of emaciated people waiting in feeding camps…the bodies of dead mothers and children, wrapped together in cloth.

BUERK: 15,000 children here now, suffering, confused, lost… Death is all around. A child or an adult dies every 20 minutes. Koram, an insignificant town, has become a place of grief.

Buerk was named Television Journalist of the Year by the Royal Television Society for his story. An unsung hero in bringing that report to the world’s attention is a humble pilot who flew him into Koram.

KEITH KETCHUM: I landed in Addis Ababa on February 4, 1984 and walked through the glass doors of the airport, which had the hammer and sickle motif, and I wondered, What have I done?

Keith Ketchum had been a commercial airline mechanic but went to Ethiopia to work with Mission Aviation Fellowship and its partner World Vision. Ketchum flew grain, milk powder, and oil to remote places with no roads…sunup to sundown—sometimes 12 flights a day. It was high-stakes work.

KETCHUM: I was approved to sign off 747s, flying over the North Atlantic. I didn’t feel that kind of pressure until I got to Ethiopia, and I realized, if I can’t get this airplane running, people are going to die.

Buerk’s graphic report wakes the world up to the problem. The BBC reports it aired on 400 stations worldwide. But back in Ethiopia:

KETCHUM: We were completely oblivious, because there was a news blackout in Ethiopia. We had no idea of the impact this had.

One person who sees Buerk’s story is British rocker Bob Geldof.The report leaves him deeply troubled. Audio here from a 2004 BBC documentary.

GELDOF: I was startled by it… any notions of records or sales disappeared. It demanded a response.

He convinces fellow musician Midge Ure to write a Christmas single to raise money for aid efforts. They come up with a tune and lyrics. They talk a recording studio into donating a single 24-hour period for recording and mixing. Geldof calls up dozens of artists.

Sting, Bono, Phil Collins, members of Wham! and Duran Duran—nearly 40 artists in all help out.

LYRIC: Feed the world, let them know it’s Christmas time again…

The song sells a million copies in its first week and goes on to raise an estimated 8 million pounds for famine aid—that’s about 40 million in today’s U.S. dollars. It also inspires American musicians to record “We are the World” four months later…

LYRIC: We were the world, we are the children.

That summer Geldof also organizes two relief concerts, called “Live Aid.” Nearly 2 billion people around the world tune in.

LYRIC: But say a prayer…

But despite that success, some say the political forces that led to the famine were downplayed—and lead to continued problems in Ethiopia.

The initial BBC report points out drought, and years of failed rains. But it doesn’t mention the role of the Derg, Ethiopia’s communist government. Keith Ketchum once again:

KETCHUM: I had a saying, we’re fighting the government to help the people, and I think the lack of cooperation, or just the hesitancy for them to see what what good we were doing and help us.

The Derg came to power in part because of how former Emperor Haile Selassie bungled a famine ten years earlier…but the Derg do no better. Eric Patterson is President of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

ERIC PATTERSON: It was using food as a weapon of war and cutting off food supplies from some of the areas that needed it most, but were from different ethnic groups in different parts of the country.

Patterson says they failed to put in place policies that would’ve made the country more resilient during natural disasters.

PATTERSON: Frankly, after 10 years of civil war, where that government had ruined its own economy, and fought against its own people, it was not in a very good position to stand up when it came and help its citizens during the time of drought and famine.

Before Buerk’s report and Band Aid’s song, Keith Ketchum says he had a dim view of journalists in Ethiopia—they took up space in the plane…space where grain could have gone. But forty years later,

KETCHUM: I love journalists now, yes, and those who influence and can rally people. I say that Bob Geldof taught a generation that it was cool to be compassionate. I also say every generation needs to learn that.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lindsay Mast.

LYRIC: …Feed the world, let them know it’s Christmas time again…