Band Aid at 40: 'We knew Christmas before your ancestors'

Forty years on, the Band Aid song continues to generate debate about the way it presents Africa.

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In 1984, responding to horrific images of the famine in northern Ethiopia broadcast on the BBC, musicians Bob Geldof and Midge Ure corralled some of the biggest stars of the era to record a charity song.

The release of the Band Aid single, and the Live Aid concert that followed eight months later, became seminal moments in celebrity fundraising and set a template that many others followed.

Do They Know It’s Christmas? is back on Monday with a fresh mix of the four versions of the song that have been issued over the years.

But the chorus of disapproval about the track, its stereotypical representation of an entire continent - describing it as a place "where nothing ever grows; no rain nor rivers flow" - and the way that recipients of the aid have been viewed as emaciated, helpless figures, has become louder over time.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9dl22gz3vlo

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