A benefit concert or charity concert is a concert, show or gala featuring musicians, comedians, or other performers that is held for a charitable purpose, often directed at a specific and immediate humanitarian crisis. Benefit concerts can have both subjective and concrete objectives. Subjective objectives include raising awareness about an issue such as misery in Africa (see Live 8) and uplifting a nation after a disaster (see America: A Tribute to Heroes). Concrete objectives include raising funds (Live Aid) and influencing legislation (Live 8; Farm Aid). The popularization of benefit concerts started after the Concert For Bangladesh, organized by George Harrison in 1971. However, the format in which most concerts are done nowadays was only created after the occurrence of Bob Geldof’s Live Aid (CBC). The two largest benefit concerts of all time, in size, were the Live 8 and the Live Earth, both with billions of spectators. Scholars theorize that the observed increase on concert size since the Live Aid is happening because organizers strive to make their events as big as the tragedy at hand, thus hoping to gain legitimization that way.
Read more about Benefit Concert: Celebrity Charity, Effectiveness, As Media Events, Benefit Concerts and Para-social Interaction, Criticisms, Notable Examples
Famous quotes containing the words benefit and/or concert:
“The laboring man and the trade-unionist, if I understand him, asks only equality before the law. Class legislation and unequal privilege, though expressly in his favor, will in the end work no benefit to him or to society.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“... in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him.... We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)