I’m a little too young to have experienced the philanthropic musical phenomenon that was Live Aid. Organized by Bob Geldof in 1985, the iconic charity concert raised over $100 million to help relieve a devastating famine in Ethiopia. One year earlier the pop supergroup Band Aid—composed of Boy George, Sting, George Michael, and other eighties idols—recorded “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” which was, sadly, a staple of every single Christmas party I attended throughout my childhood.
The tone-deaf track raised a further $24 million, a sterling effort, but I despise it. A rubbish song, poorly sung, and the epitome of self-indulgent celebrity cringe, it didn’t even solve famine in Ethiopia. As of 2021 the food security organization IPC reported that three-quarters of that country’s population still faced the prospect of “high acute food insecurity,” a situation worse than in 1985. (Please imagine me slow clapping here.)
Why am I telling you this? Because I want to highlight a much lesser-known, much more measurably successful and frankly far superior charity record that I happened upon in a thrift shop this month. Released just one year after Live Aid, Jazz Against Polio was a collaboration between service organization Rotary International and the Reunion Jazz Band—something of a Dutch jazz supergroup—to benefit a project to eradicate polio worldwide, dubbed Polio
