Staff WriterThe United Nations is staging a special concert on Tuesday, 15 May, in the General Assembly Hall featuring reggae, jazz, hip-hop, percussion and other musical styles with African roots.
Headlining the show is the band Third World from Jamaica, one of the longest-performing reggae bands in the world and arguably one of the best representatives ofthe spirit of the Caribbean.
From Senegal, the concert will feature Mbaye Dieye Faye and Sing Sing Rhythm, with Faye being best known for his percussion work with the legendary Youssou N’Dour. Rounding out the programme are jazz singer Rachelle Jeanty of Haiti, a well-known face on the international jazz scene, and Brooklyn-born Chen Lo with his band Chen Lo and the Lo Frequency, a contemporary home-grown band that has travelled to the Middle East and North Africa with a hip-hop message of love and diplomacy. The award-winning broadcaster April Sutton will serve as the evening’s Mistress of Ceremonies.
Organized around the theme “Honouring the Heroes, Resisters and Survivors”, the concert marks the culmination of a series of commemorative events in 2012 dedicated to the remembrance of the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade (www.un.org/en/slavery). The concert also aims to raise awareness and encourage support for the initiative under way to erect a permanent memorial at the United Nations to remind the world about the millions of Africans who were violently removed from their homelands and forced into slavery.
The concert will be webcast live and delayed on www.un.org/webcast, as well as carried live on television in the New York City area on Time Warner cable channel 150.
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