Concert Revue by Alan Duckworth
The Global Citizen and World Childhood Foundation held the Thank You Festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion last Thursday. It was in large part an awareness concert aimed at mobilizing youth to take action against extreme poverty worldwide. An impressive social media campaign triggered more than 140,000 concert-goers to call on Dr. Raj Shah, the Administrator of USAID, to increase US aid and support.
In a conversation regarding children’s AIDS with Hugh Evans, the CEO of The Global Poverty Project, he stated. Dr. Shah has committed 2.9 billion dollars over the next 5-10 years to save 500,000 children’s lives. “To save a child’s life you need a number of different interventions,” he told us. “A key part of it is combating HIV, AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. The way you do that is largely through preventing mother-to-child transmission, so if you can give women and mothers access to antiretroviral drugs during child birth, children are far less likely to contract AIDS when they’re born. That’s part of the USA’s existing program called PEPFAR (which stands for President’s Emergency Plan For Aids Relief), so tonight the fact that Dr. Raj Shah is here and made that announcement means that some of that money will be applied from USAID to children around the world who are newborns to prevent them from contracting HIV and AIDS.”
Battling the AIDS epidemic is so important when trying to better the lives of the impoverished youth. I attended a screening of the Sundance Film Festival award-winning film Blood Brother. It documented children with AIDS in India. The stories are absolutely horrific. There are AIDS-stricken parents who actually consider killing their newborns over fear they will contract the virus. They need help, hope and YOUR attention. Medical science has succeed enormously by reducing mortality in young children and the dangers of infection for women in childbirth, yes; in very considerable means prolonging the average length of human life. And there’s lists of benefits we owe a much desired practical progress.
This concert was a fantastic idea in a number of ways. It was a collection of interests aimed specifically at youth to take a stand for an immensely important cause and have fun in the process. Anthropological research would suggest that large crowds express themselves collectively. If you can take a Thank You Festival crowd of 20,000 plus people and have them mutually agree the importance of something like The Global Poverty Project, it goes a long way in producing change.
This concert was a celebration of music and progress. The Electronic Dance Music (EDM) lineup was a means to express yourself freely. Some heavy hitters from the genre were there, like local native Alvin Risk, Above & Beyond, Krewella, Cedric Gervais and Tiësto, who is probably the biggest name DJ on the planet! The atmosphere was somewhat of a perpetual New Year’s Eve party at midnight. There were explosions of confetti and balloons. You could feel the electricity, it was a sensation that made you want to move and cheer. Onstage a DJ booth was incorporated into a very large screen displaying high definition graphics. The entertainment value was stellar!
Tiësto, who recently released his new album A Town Called Paradise, was the headlining act. The audience couldn’t have been any more excited, and reacted accordingly to his presence on stage. There are moments in life, when you just had to stop and take in all of my surroundings. When Tiësto played “Red Lights,” it was one of those moments! Tiësto’s overall presentation was magnificent! There were 3D graphics of a mechanical bird assembling and spreading its wings to form the infamous Tiësto “T” logo. You could feel the bass pulsating on your skin. It was an incredible experience! If you were to consider the goal of bringing awareness to the cause of global poverty then this concert was a huge success! It’s events like these that really demonstrate how concerts, which are collections of individuals who agree on the same sound, can also collectively agree on the same cause. It’s making the most of a good time.
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