Paste Magazine :: News :: African artists assemble to celebrate U2 on compilation

U2 has been trying to throw its arms around the world ever since the band blew up into unprecedented rock superstars. The group has especially focused its efforts on the plight of developing African nations, from debt relief to AIDS to pervasive famine.

“You can throw pennies at the problem, but at a certain point I felt God wasn’t looking for alms,” Bono told Paste in an article for our “Can Rock Save the World?” issue. “He was looking for action. You can’t fix every problem, but the ones you can fix, you have to.”

That sense of obligation has led the band to plenty of charitable efforts in the past. But now some of Africa’s most accomplished musicians are paying a token of gratitude to U2 for its years of service.

On April 1, Shout! Factory releases In the Name of Love: Africa Celebrates U2. The compilation features 12 artists – each representing a different region of Africa – covering U2 standards. Participating artists include Vieux Farka Touré, Tony Allen and Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars. A portion of the proceeds from the CD benefit The Global Fund, an organization that works in 136 countries across the world to combat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Shawn Amos and Paul Heck produced the compilation.

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Bono has claimed that U2’s new album is going to be “extraordinary” and that it will sound completely different to anything that has been heard before.

The frontman revealed that the band’s new sound has been inspired by a visit to Morocco last year.

Bono told the Independent: “Normally when you play a U2 tune, it clears the dance floor. And that may not be true of this. There’s some trance influences. But there’s some very hardcore guitar coming out of The Edge. Real molten metal.

“It’s not like anything we’ve ever done before, and we don’t think it sounds like anything anyone else has done either.”

The singer explained that going to a religious music festival in Fez, Morocco helped them write new material. He said: “It was a real humbling thing for a punk rock shouter, listening to these people who just close their eyes for 40 minutes and sing the most sophisticated melodies.”

He added: “We have enough material for two albums but it has to be extraordinary. And I think we’ve got that.”

- Digital Spy

Last year, a special issue of The Independent, edited by Bono, introduced a new way of raising money to fight HIV/Aids. Since then, the (Red) initiative has raised more than $50m and helped more than one million people. In an exclusive interview, Bono tells Paul Vallely why people in rich nations can make a difference to the Aids disaster

(01 December 2007) In a world of calibrated cynicism here’s something unabashedly positive to celebrate today to mark what is the 20th occasion that people across the globe have commemorated – if that’s the right word – World Aids Day. The words come from the man who is now as honoured as a campaigner against extreme poverty as he is as front man for the world’s biggest-selling rock band. “Three years ago,” says Bono, the lead singer of U2, “there was virtually no one in Africa on antiretroviral drugs. Now you’ll have two million by the end of this year.”Two million is, of course, only a fraction of those affected by the disease which has to date killed more than 25 million people – making it one of the most destructive epidemics in human history. Another estimated 40 million people are now living with HIV.

But the international community is, for the first time, showing real signs of progress in combating the disease on a significant scale.That fact is, in no small measure, down to the campaigning of the impassioned Irish vocalist, who has lobbied governments for action and corralled some of the world’s biggest businesses into playing their part – which is why this newspaper, for the fourth time, turns itself (Red) today.

Since it was founded 20 months ago, (Red) has donated an extraordinary $50,005,410 (£24,324,379) to the Global Fund to fights Aids, TB and Malaria. “Do the maths,” says Bono. “It costs about $5 a week to pay for the two pills a day it takes to keep someone with HIV alive.”

Aids is no longer a death sentence. Antiretroviral medication will bring someone who is at death’s door back to virtually full health. Doctors call itthe Lazarus effect.

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