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For someone sitting away from Delhi, parts of Assam and Aligarh, the U2 concert in Mumbai’s DY Patil Stadium, was a massive wake up call. The international rock band, U2, performed in India for the first time and while the fans might say that they were forty years too late, they did come at a time when the message was much needed.
The band opened their concert with the popular single ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ and ended with AR Rahman and his daughters joining Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr on stage singing ‘Ahimsa’.
When you hear about a concert, for a lot of us it’s about partying and having a good time. But a concert with U2 is about being politically and socially aware. The band rose the bar so high, that for years to come it’ll be difficult for performers to match what this band of 4 did on the stage. With their classics like ‘Hand of Love’ and ‘Give Peace a Chance’, they left the crowd humming and thinking.
After touching upon themes like peace and human rights violation, the band’s next few songs had the crowd rooting for them even more. It was the all-time favourite ‘Beautiful Day’.
From icons like Audre Lorde, Mary Wollstonecraft to Indian women who have been game-changers like Rana Ayyub, Karuna Nundy, Gauri Lankesh, Smriti Irani; U2 made sure the crowd sang for each one of them.
A crowd of about 50,000 odd people came from all over the country to attend the first-ever U2 concert and when Bono and boys started playing he said, “Tonight, we’ll put up the best show we ever have.”
And it was, indeed.
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