I took my kids to see both Youssou N’Dour and Orchestra Baobab within the last year, which is pretty funny because I could probably name maybe two other african bands. The Orchestra Baobab concert was during their normal naptime, and the dim lights and the band’s relatively slow tempo made them pretty tired.

The BBC World Service (I was listening in on XM Radio) covered that concert as well, and did a decent job pointing out the omission of African artists from the main Live8 bill at Hyde Park.

There was also a Live8 concert happening in Johannesburg, which obviously had a decent quotient of African (including black African) musicians. I heard a snippet from the performance of a group called Orchestra Baobab that I thought was dynamite.

But yes, while it would have been fun to see these groups perform (in any of the settings) I don’t see this thing doing much actual good either.

As regards the concerts themselves, it’s by now a cliche to suggest that a smattering of African acts might have leavened the mix a little (N’Dour, after all, had to play 3 concerts that day to help up the quota). But I would find it hard to pick out half a dozen acts worldwide that I found exciting: Velvet Revolver; the shambolic Pete Doherty; Snoop; umm…

In the main they were the most MOR and AOR of acts imaginable. I mean, I am sure that there is a place for Annie Lennox and Chris de Bleurgh, but this isn’t it. Not to mention that Geldof and Ure really need to ask themselves if they would be performing if they were not also organising.

[substantial ongoing rant about both popular motivations and music self-censored on re-reading…]

Plus, sometimes good things happen. I thought the people trying to get their colleges to divest from companies that invested in Apartheid South Africa in the eighties were just fooling themselves. On what posssible mechanism could that really help things, rather than just make the protestors feel better? Turns out I was wrong.

But then, yes, the rest of what you say is dead on target.