
Not long after Band Aid and We Are The World focused musical attention on famine in Africa, a collection of artists decided a similar approach might help in the struggle against apartheid. The initiator was Steven van Zandt - erstwhile guitarist in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band - who whipped up dozens of musicians to work on the project. They included Peter Gabriel, members of U2, Springsteen himself, Hall and Oates, Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Run DMC, Lou Reed, Jackson Browne and Keith Richards. Van Zandt wrote and produced the song himself and it reached the top 40 in several European nations, though not in the US. Sun City is a large casino resort in the north-west of South Africa. During the apartheid years it was located in 'independent' state of Bophuthatswana, a phoney political construct that enabled white South Africans to visit a casino, gamble and attend strip shows, even though these activities were illegal within South Africa itself. Although the United Nations had placed a cultural ban on artists touring or performing in South Africa, many notable American and European acts ignored this and received large sums to perform at Sun City's massive auditorium. Amongst those to defy the ban included Linda Ronstadt, Queen, Laura Branigan, Rod Stewart, Julio Iglesias - and, ironically, black singers such as Ray Charles, Dionne Warwick and Boney M. As a result, Van Zandt's song continually insists that "I ain't gonna play Sun City": Twenty-three million can't vote <b>...</b>
Sun City
Steven Van Zandt
apartheid
South Africa
Bophuthatswana
musicinhistory