A Historical OverView of Philanthropy
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events threatening the welfare of the humankind, such as terrorism, natural disasters,
global warming and energy crises (Gordon and Meunier 9).
After its early stages of mainstream use in the 1980s and 1990s, the last
two decades witnessed a great leap in technology. New technology became widely
accepted by the most of the world, but simultaneously, it also gave rise to concems
about stress and antisocialism, including the overuse of the Internet. Castelles
defined the new media as the cultural creation that “affect the consciousness of
society as a whole” (141).
In the music industry, the economic issues and trends in rock music have
shifted in the 1990s. Some of the changes include ticket price increase, Copyright
protection, unprecedented mergers of major labels, and technological advancement
among many. Into the new millennium, the record industry constantly failed to
respond to waming signs and to accept the obvious shift in technology, as evidenced
by the MP3 and file-sharing (Knopper 123).
In the 2000s, music consumers benefited largely from the technology with
which music could be shared, either over the Internet or by the exchange of physical
products. This has resulted in giving consumers unmatched and unprecedented
choices in music experiences and has opened up the marketplace to musicians in
which they previously had little or no place. At the same time, it has created
controversies in Copyright issues and sharp decline in music sales (Kusek and
Leonhard 10).
As if to define the characteristics of the Generation X—the main audience
and consumers of music during this time period—the 1990s and the early 2000s saw
little effort when it comes to charity concerts or recordings, in contrast to the
omnipresence of “charity rock” in the previous two decades. Although Generation X
is “often labeled by historians, novelists and joumalists in an attempt to capture the
spirit or essence of an era” (Brinkley 1), a lack of charity work may have to do with
the informal way Generation Xers manage problems.
The prototypical and historical definition of “rock music” in general, which
seemed to go together with social and political activism, was no longer the case in
the 1990s and the 2000s, as the music branched out to many different sub-genres that
were rarely associated with social or political awareness. For example, a few wellknown concerts or tours during this time were rather commercially driven, such as
Woodstock ’94, Woodstock 1999, Lollapalooza, and Ozzfest. They were conceived
and marketed as commercial ventures and they were “heavy with corporate
sponsorship” (Laing 3). In the two decades defined by teen pop, electronic dance
music, hip-hop, in addition to alternative rock, there was little sense of social
consciousness, not to mention philanthropy, until the second half of the 2000s when
a series of charity events surfaced. Still, most of those events were considered
politically motivated than emotionally driven with humanitarian pulse.
The two decades also saw a number of charity rock events emerge in line
with their anniversaries in one way or another. In addition, the increased concems in
environmental issues and terrorism resulted in somewhat politically charged events,
as in Tibetan Freedom Concerts (1996), The Concert for New York City (2001), and
Live 8 (2005). These political concerts focused more on govemments, world leaders,