“Happy 91st, Mr. Mandela,” Aretha Franklin announced at Radio City Music Hall on Saturday night, celebrating Nelson Mandela’s birthday. She was among the dozens of musicians at Mandela Day, a benefit concert for 46664, Mr. Mandela’s organization for AIDS and H.I.V. prevention. It is named for his prisoner number during his 27 years in jail for fighting apartheid.
Since 2003, concerts have been presented by 46664 in South Africa, Spain, Norway and England, before New York City this year. This was the first one Mr. Mandela could not attend, because he no longer travels outside South Africa. Now Mr. Mandela’s admirers hope to see his birthday, July 18, become an internationally recognized Mandela Day: “Not a holiday,” Mr. Mandela admonished on video, but “a day dedicated to service.”
His call for volunteerism has a theme song, “With My Own Two Hands,” which was written by Ben Harper and was performed on Saturday by a South African singer, Chris Chameleon, and a Senegalese one, Baaba Maal.
Pressing the case, and calling on the audience to devote time to unselfish deeds, were Morgan Freeman, Forest Whitaker, Whoopi Goldberg, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, among other actors.
Stevie Wonder concluded the show, flanked by all the other performers, exulting in his own “Happy Birthday” — a song that once supported the creation of the Martin Luther King’s Birthday holiday, now repurposed.
Source: NYT
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a song that once supported the creation of the Martin Luther King’s Birthday holiday, now repurposed.
“With My Own Two Hands,” Mr. Mandela, I am really happy that I stumbled across this in my search for something relating to it