Unprecedented

From Bill Carter: A Wanderer Rushed In

We take the media for granted sometimes. We think it is the only way to interact with the world. When a war goes on, for example, we expect the BBC, CNN and Time Magazine will all send reporters to get the story from the front. We tend to forget that what they give us is mediated: they decide what pictures to show, what questions to ask, what portions of answers to report to us.

All this is necessary if you want to understand why what happened for thirteen nights in 1993 was unprecedented. Each night, one or two or three citizens in besieged Sarajevo spoke to an audience of 50,000, 60,000, or 100,000 people. They spoke for a few minutes about whatever they wanted to talk about. What they said was live and unedited. They did not speak to a reporter who then explained to a news anchor what it all meant -- they spoke to a rock crowd. The audiences were there for U2's Zooropa tour.

The Sarajevo linkups were just as this author described -- unprecedented -- and there hasn't been anything like them since. I heard a bootleg of the concert they later performed in Sarajevo, where they interviewed a man from the city who simply wanted to tell his loved ones that he was still alive. Still alive! Life and death and love and war in the middle of a rock concert. It was truly shocking, and heart-wrenching.

The article talks mostly about Bill Carter, who originally came up with and suggested the concept to the band. It's a great read. He has a documentary entitled Miss Sarajevo, now out on DVD, which includes the first of the Sarajevo linkups as well as an emotional interview with Bono from that same time period. The filming of the documentary also helped inspired the song "Miss Sarajevo" which, although recorded under the Passengers pseudonym, is one of U2's most moving songs. The video is absolutely stunning as well, and it's on the Best of 1990-2000 DVD.

A corresponding article centers around a woman named Alma, who was one of the characters in Carter's documentary. She said this of Bill Carter and U2:

He used to go everywhere with his small camera, shooting me, my friends, everything he thought to be interesting. For us, it was great fun. Then, he left and came back with Miss Sarajevo. He brought me the videotape, but some time passed by before I first saw it, of course, because of electricity. He told me all about the movie, about U2 involvement, MTV thing -- you cannot imagine how excited I was! At the time, I used to like rap music, and group East 17, but when Bill gave me ZOOROPA CD, I was honored to be one of the very rare persons in the city that have that CD, even though I couldn't listen to it. I remember people whom I had never seen come to my door to ask if they could borrow the CD. Everyone liked U2 in the city, not only because of their music, but because they cared...

This chapter in U2's history is another in a long list of things that confirm my belief that U2 is one of the all-time great bands. If these lesser-known stories make their way into the public consciousness and into U2's legacy, history will think of them as fondly as I do.

Posted by JohnH at February 14, 2004 09:48 AM | TrackBack