About The DVD:   Deluxe DVD Box | Standard DVD Box The Concert for Bangladesh was the first benefit concert of its kind in that it brought together an extraordinary assemblage of major artists collaborating for a common humanitarian cause - setting the precedent that music could be used to serve a higher cause.
This landmark concert has now been stunningly re-mixed from the original source tapes and is released in two formats - standard and deluxe. Both 2 disc packages include the original 99 minute film restored and remixed in 5.1, as well as 72-minutes of extras.
The extras feature a 45 minute documentary "The Concert For Bangladesh Revisited with George Harrison & friends", about the background to the two shows with exclusive interviews and contributions from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Sir Bob Geldof. The CD:
The album of the concert has been remixed and repackaged as a 2-disc set, and is released on October 25th, 2005 by Capitol Records. This will contain an additional track – the Bob Dylan performance of "Love Minus Zero/No Limit".
CD1
1. Introduction – George Harrison & Ravi Shankar
2. Bangla Dhun – Ravi Shankar
3. Wah Wah – George Harrison
4. My Sweet Lord – George Harrison
5. Awaiting On You All – George Harrison
6. That's The Way God Planned It – Billy Preston
7. It Don't Come Easy – Ringo Starr
8. Beware Of Darkness – George Harrison
9. While My Guitar Gently Weeps – George Harrison
10. Jumpin' Jack Flash / Youngblood – Leon Russell
CD2
1. Here Comes The Sun – George Harrison
2. A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall – Bob Dylan
3. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry – Bob Dylan
4. Blowin' In The Wind – Bob Dylan
5. Mr. Tambourine Man – Bob Dylan
6. Just Like A Woman – Bob Dylan
7. Something – George Harrison
8. Bangladesh – George Harrison
9. Love Minus Zero/No Limit – Bob Dylan
Bangladesh & UNICEF: Crisis in Bangladesh
By August 1971, when George Harrison, Ravi Shankar, and friends took the stage at Madison Square Garden to play the Concert for Bangladesh, 10 million East Pakistani refugees had fled over the border into India with scant hope of surviving inevitable hunger and disease.
Up to that point, little public attention had been drawn to the crisis in East Pakistan/Bangladesh. Few people outside the region knew how the deadly catastrophe had come to be, or what individuals who cared could do to help relieve the suffering.
The events leading to Pakistan's refugee crisis had started with that nation's birth in 1947 and with the decision by local authorities, and the departing British, to carve the sub-continent's Muslim regions from predominantly Hindu India. The result was the creation of two distinct provincial territories, West and East Pakistan, with more than 1,000 miles of India dividing them.
It wasn't just geography that split Pakistan's two "wings." These two Pakistans could not have been more different, separated also by race, culture, and language. Urdu was the dominant language of West Pakistan. Bengla was spoken in the East. And although the East Bengalis outnumbered the Pakistanis in the west, political and economic power was centered in West Pakistan.
Eventually, conditions placed the East Pakistanis in a position to change the balance of power.
Promising to end dictatorship and introduce democracy, General Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan came to power in 1969. The general appeared to make good on his pledge when free elections, the first in Pakistan?s history, were held toward the end of the following year.
The outcome of the voting, however, came as a blow to the West Pakistani leadership. The Awami People's League of Bangladesh had won an overwhelming victory, capturing a majority of Pakistan?s legislative seats. It appeared that the Awami party had been mandated to create Pakistan's first democratic government.
But the regime in the West refused to allow the transfer of power to East Pakistan. In March, 1971, the order was issued to eliminate opposition to West Pakistan's dominance.
To this day no one knows how many were killed in the conflict that followed. Estimates range from several hundred thousand to three million.
The fleeing refugees who had survived the violence in their homeland were now threatened by starvation, lack of sanitation, cholera, and other deadly illnesses. Combined with these perils was a season of natural disaster in the form of destructive floods. Predictably, most of the victims succumbing to the hardship were children.
The Indian Government estimated the cost of caring for the refugees at $1 million a day. Foreign aid provided only a fraction of the desperately needed food, equipment, and medicine. It was in this dramatic context that George Harrison, Ravi Shankar, and their fellow musicians decided to rally worldwide support for relief efforts in Bangladesh -- thereby averting an even greater humanitarian disaster.
A long-playing Success:
It's easy to forget, in these media-saturated times, that in 1971 few people living in industrialized societies really paid attention to humanitarian emergencies far from home.
Fortunately for the children of Bangladesh, one of those few - Indian sitar master Ravi Shankar - was intimately aware of the tragedy then unfolding in their war-torn homeland. Convinced that something could be done, Shankar contacted his friend, George Harrison. Together, they conceived the Concert for Bangladesh as a fundraiser to support relief efforts by UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund.
The results were critically important to UNICEF's crisis response, which was already underway as part of a wider international campaign. The Concert for Bangladesh itself brought in $250,000 that was immediately converted to urgently needed aid. Artists' royalties from the release of the triple album boxed set in December 1971 and the concert film in March 1972 dramatically increased the revenue donated to UNICEF in the decade that followed.
These donations had a profound impact on UNICEF's ability to provide Bangladeshi children and families with the basic nutrition and clean water they needed to survive. The funds had a longer-term impact as well, helping UNICEF to expand its work in Bangladesh. While still poor, the country has made tremendous strides for its children in the past 30-plus years.
And donations from the Concert for Bangladesh did even more, supporting crucial field research on the control of diarrheal dehydration caused by drinking unsafe water. During the Bangladesh crisis, aid workers discovered that a solution called "oral rehydration therapy," or ORT - a simple packet of salts and sugars, with a bit of potassium added - was a low-cost lifesaver. ORT is now used widely and has saved millions of kids' lives.
More than three decades later, the beautiful sounds of the Concert for Bangladesh still reverberate to the benefit of young people throughout the developing world. To the musicians and music lovers whose generosity has made this long-playing success possible, please accept the heartfelt thanks of UNICEF and the children we serve.
Funding Supports UNICEF Research: Click Here
Readio Programs: Click Here
Web Site: The Concert for Bangladesh  |