A remarkable event ....The Concert for Bangladesh (or Bangla Desh, as the country was originally spelt) was the name for two benefit concerts organised by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, held at 2.30 and 8 pm on Sunday, 1 August 1971, playing to a total of 40,000 people at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The shows were organised to raise international awareness and fund relief efforts for refugees from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), following the 1970 Bhola cyclone and the civil war-related Bangladesh atrocities. The concerts were followed by a bestselling live album, a boxed three-record set, and Apple Films concert documentary, which opened in cinemas in the spring of 1972. The event was the first-ever benefit concert of such a magnitude[1] and featured a supergroup of performers that included Harrison, fellow ex-Beatle Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Leon Russell and the band Badfinger. In addition, Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan – both of whom had ancestral roots in Bangladesh – performed an opening set of Indian classical music. Decades later, Shankar would say of the overwhelming success of the event: In one day, the whole world knew the name of Bangladesh. It was a fantastic occasion ...[2] The concerts raised close to US$250,000 for Bangladesh relief, which was administered by UNICEF.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 06:07:16 +0000
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