{"id":150705,"date":"2011-12-23T13:17:06","date_gmt":"2011-12-23T09:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=150705"},"modified":"2011-12-23T13:36:27","modified_gmt":"2011-12-23T09:36:27","slug":"%e2%80%98yes-we-know-it%e2%80%99s-christmas%e2%80%99-say-african-musicians-as-they-record-response-to-band-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/12\/23\/%e2%80%98yes-we-know-it%e2%80%99s-christmas%e2%80%99-say-african-musicians-as-they-record-response-to-band-aid.html","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Yes, We Know it\u2019s Christmas,\u2019 Say African Musicians as They Record Response to Band Aid"},"content":{"rendered":"

After 28 years of silently tolerating it, a group of unemployed local musicians have joined forces to release a Christmas single, entitled “Yes we do,”\u00a0in response to the Bob Geldof inspired Band Aid song “Do they know it\u2019s Christmas?,” reports Hayibo.com<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the launch of their song, the musicians praised Geldof\u2019s relentless quest for an answer and said they hoped their collaboration would free the Irishman and his friends to start looking for solutions to new and more important questions.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike Do they know about climate change in America? Or did Kim Jong-il have time to write down the abort codes for the nukes before he died? Or perhaps he can revert to the time-honoured classic \u2013 \u2018Tell me why I don\u2019t like Mondays’.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking at the launch of the single, whose proceeds will go towards teaching discipline, literacy and contraception at British schools, composer and singer Boomtown Gundane said that for years he had been irked by Geldof\u2019s assumption that hungry Africans were also stupid.<\/p>\n

\u201cOr was he just saying that Africans were stupid? Of course we knew it was Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said despite the poverty and hunger that had inspired Geldof and his friends to create the song back in 1984 that Africans had developed their own ways to remember Christmas.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust because we don\u2019t have Boney M or Christmas advertising in September doesn\u2019t mean we are oblivious to it,\u201d said Gundane who went on to suggest that Africans were a lot like the Irish.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey made it through disasters like the potato blight and the invention of the Protestant church without forgetting Christmas \u2013 why did they think we would forget it?\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked why the ensemble of African musicians, who have called themselves Plaster Cast<\/em>, had taken so long to come up with a response to the Band Aid song Gundane said it had taken a while for them to realize that it wasn\u2019t actually an elaborate joke.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe kept waiting for them to laugh,\u201d he said, \u201cBut the punch-line never arrived.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gundane said he hoped that his involvement with the song would turn him into an expert on British politics and economics in the same way “Do they know it\u2019s Christmas” had turned Geldof and Bono into the world\u2019s leading experts on Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019m not sharing a platform with the Queen and David Cameron by this time next year; or headlining at Glastonbury, then I will have done something very wrong,\u201d said Gundane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After 28 years of silently tolerating it, a group of unemployed local musicians have joined forces to release a Christmas single, entitled “Yes we do,”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":150711,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[36207,36205,36206,13206],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150705"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}