NME spoke to Brian Eno at last night’s star-studded Together For Palestine concert at London’s Wembley Arena, where he told us about the power of music to effect change, and how we’re currently seeing “the biggest social movement in human history”. Watch our video interview above.
Taking place at the OVO Arena Wembley, the night saw huge performances from Damon Albarn, Paul Weller, Rachel Chinouriri, Yasiin Bey, and more, and had presenters including Eric Cantona, PinkPantheress, Richard Gere, Benedict Cumberbatch, Florence Pugh, and Nicola Coughlan.
The event, which was also available as a livestream, raised just under £1.5million for the ‘Together For Palestine Fund’, which will be distributed to Palestinian-led organisations such as Taawon, Palestine Children’s Relief Fund and Palestine Medical Relief Service.
The concert came just a day after a UN commission inquiry concluded that Israel had committed a genocide in Gaza.
Asked what a night like this tells us about the relationship between culture, politics and change, Eno replied: “That’s a kind of act of hope, that there is a relationship”.
“I hope that culture is upstream of politics,” he added. “I think it is. I think the state of mind that culture creates in people encourages or provides a frame in which people can operate and in which politicians can operate, but I don’t know if that’s true – it’s an act of faith.”
Recommended
He continued: “Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s different from writing songs that tell you what to think. Propagandistic songs, that’s not something I’m particularly interested in. Does it make a difference to suddenly see a lot of people from different backgrounds together on a stage? I think it does. I think it says, ‘No problem, we can work together and enjoy our differences rather than be frightened by them. I hope that’s true, but this is all an act of faith.”
While the icon said he “doesn’t blame you”, if you’re feeling helpless, he would call upon music fans to always have hope that change is possible with enough solidarity and conversation.
“Don’t be hopeless. You are in the middle of the biggest social movement in human history,” Eno assured. “The climate movement and all of these social justice movements are all part of the same thing, it’s all part of people thinking, ‘The thing is really fucked up, we can do something about it, we have to do something about it’. They’re doing that in the absence of political leadership.
“There just isn’t very good political leadership at the moment. People are just fighting over the most absurd issues at the moment. The leader of the Conservative Party makes some absurd statement to an absurd misquotation from someone else and that becomes the issue for a few weeks. Really, it’s so disappointing.”
Eno added: “The quality of conversation is so disappointing. The interesting conversations now are being had between people like you and me: people who aren’t strictly speaking ‘qualified’, we’re finding our way. We’re finding a different way to what the politicians have found.”
Check out all of what went down at the Together For Palestine concert here, and visit here to donate to the Together For Palestine fund.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.