American benefit concert
A Concert for Charlottesville was a benefit concert held on September 24, 2017, organized by the Dave Matthews Band to raise funds for the victims killed and injured during the Unite the Right rally held from August 11–12, 2017. The band labeled the event as "An Evening of Music and Unity."
Tickets for the concert were free but prioritized for the greater Charlottesville area and students, faculty, and staff of the University of Virginia. Attendees were encouraged to donate to the "Concert for Charlottesville Fund," benefiting "victims of the events in Charlottesville on August 11 and 12, their families, first responders, and organizations devoted to the promotion of healing, unity and justice locally and nationwide."
The concert was also live-streamed to audiences around the world through platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and by Oath Inc. sites, including Tumblr and HuffPost.
Background.
On the evening of August 11, a day before the Unite the Right rally was to be held, a group of white nationalists marched onto the University of Virginia campus. The marchers carried lit tiki torches and chanted antisemitic, homophobic, and misogynistic slurs at bystanders.
Just before noon on August 12, the rally was canceled after the Virginia State Police declared that the gathering was an unlawful assembly. After the rally was aborted, James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car through a crowd of counterprotestors on the Downtown Mall. One person, Heather Heyer, was killed and 19 others were injured in the attack. Two Virginia state troopers, Lieutenant H. Jay Cullen and Trooper-Pilot Berke M. M. Bates, were also killed while on their way to assist with public safety in Charlottesville, after their helicopter crashed 7 miles southwest of the city.
Concert.
Dave Matthews opened the concert by performing an acoustic rendition of "Mercy". He then invited Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer, onto the stage where she thanked the crowd and asked them to be part of her daughter's legacy.
Bro's speech was followed by a performance by Cage the Elephant. Chris Martin and Jonny Buckland of Coldplay were then announced as special guests by Pharrell Williams. The duo performed some of the band's biggest songs as well as a cover of "You Never Can Tell" by Chuck Berry. The concert then proceeded with performances by The Roots with Bilal and Brittany Howard, Williams, Chris Stapleton, Justin Timberlake and Ariana Grande. The Dave Matthews Band and special guest Stevie Wonder closed out the concert by performing a cover of John Lennon's "Imagine", and Wonder's famous single, "Superstition".
Williams, Matthews, and Wonder at one point during their respective performances each knelt on stage, performing the gesture to show solidarity with NFL players protesting the National Anthem and in response to Donald Trump's criticism of the players.
The concert faced some criticism from local racial justice organizations, including Solidarity Charlottesville. These community members raised issue with the event being planned in part by Charlottesville city officials and University of Virginia leaders, whose inaction they viewed as being partly responsible for the violence on August 11 and 12, as would be confirmed in the Heaphy Report, commissioned by the city in response to the events of Unite the Right. A protest was held across the street at the beginning of the concert, with student and community activists holding banners reading, "No Unity Without Justice."
Set list.
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References.
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