2006 – Gospel singer Helen Berhane is released after spending two years in a metal shipping container. Berhane was arrested and put into detention in Eritrea for belonging to the banned Rema Church.
Helen Berhane (born c. 1975) is a Christian Gospel singer who was a prisoner in Eritrea.
Berhane is a member of the Rema church, one of several minority Evangelical Christian churches not officially recognized by the state of Eritrea and heavily persecuted. She was arrested on 13 May 2004, shortly after she released an album of Christian music, after refusing to sign a document pledging to end all participation in Evangelical activities, effectively forcing her to abandon her prohibited evangelical faith and music. She was detained at Mai Serwa military camp, north of the capital Asmara. Berhane reported that she spent most of her day locked inside a metal shipping container, in unsanitary and inhumane conditions; she had no possibility of contact with her family and was denied legal representation or medical care.
On Eritrean Independence Day, 24 May 2006, Amnesty International renewed their appeal to Eritrea’s President Isaias Afewerki to ensure the improvement of human rights standards in the country. Five of the six female prisoners Amnesty International appealed for the release of last year on this date, including Berhane, were still held at the time. They had not been charged with anything nor brought to any court.
Berhane’s 2003 album, T’ Kebaeku (I Am Anointed), was re-released in Europe in June 2006.
Release
On 2 November 2006 it was reported that Berhane was released from prison in late October 2006.
2004 – UK R&B singer Jamelia and Kanye West each win three awards at the Music of Black Origin Awards in London. A protest is held outside the venue in support of Elephant Man and Vybz Kartel, who were banned from the awards for their homophobic lyrics.
2004 – as the third season of American Idol was aired on US TV a memo was leaked showing a list of songs banned from being performed at this year’s auditions that included, Elton John’s ‘Candle In The Wind’ and ‘Fallin’ by Alicia Keys. Also all songs by Bruce Springsteen, Mariah Carey, No Doubt, R. Kelly, Tom Petty, Korn and Linkin Park were not allowed after concerns over the cost of securing rights for the song’s use, (or the composers not wanting their song’s to be performed on the show).
2004 – James Lawrence, guitarist with Hope of the States, is found hanged at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studios near Bath, where the UK art rockers were finishing work on their debut album. He was 26.
HOPE OF the States, for whom James Lawrence played guitar, was one of a new generation of British bands rekindling a sort of musical ambition reminiscent of the previously discredited prog-rock of the early 1970s, combined with the political, passionate commitment of punk.
Inspired by a series of late 1990s sonic adventurers – the doomy grandeur of Radiohead and Spiritualised, the neo-psychedelia of America’s Mercury Rev and the Flaming Lips, and the haunting, post- rock political diatribes of Canada’s Godspeed You Black Emperor! – the band joined young compatriots like Elbow and Muse in trying to throw off Britpop’s musically retrograde legacy. As their singer Sam Herlihy noted:
At the tail-end of Britpop . . . there was a weird atmosphere of people grasping at straws without having anything to believe. I’d like to think that maybe [our records] will be the start of something else. A kickstart.
Jimmi Lawrence was born in Chichester in 1977 and attended Chichester High School for Boys, where he met Herlihy and Ant Theaker. The three of them went on to form the early core of Hope of the States, with the current line-up established in 2002. The bands’s promise was apparent when they self-released the slow-building, eight- minute single “Black Dollar Bills”. Sony signed them on the strength of it in 2003, after a fierce bidding war. The major-label reissue of “Black Dollar Bills” gained minor notoriety when its video was banned by MTV2 during the second Gulf War, for “politically inappropriate”, animated images of B52 bombers.
Military uniforms and apocalyptic footage of devastated wastelands also featured in their intense live shows, in which Lawrence’s guitar interweaved with organs and violin.
When their second single, “Enemies; Friends” entered the Top Thirty last October, leading to a Top of the Pops appearance, their momentum was quietly maintained. Ken Thomas, producer of the atmospheric Icelanders Sigur Ros, collaborated on their debut album, which was recorded in locations typically chosen to avoid, in Herlihy’s words, the “ghosts” of earlier groups: a freezing Russian bunker, an isolated Irish farmhouse, and Peter Gabriel’s Real World studios, near Bath. The album was due to be completed next week, and released in the spring, with a single and gig both scheduled for February. In a feature in last week’s NME, which anticipated “one of the albums of 2004″, Herlihy talked buoyantly of the band’s prospects:
The isolation is really good . . . This might be the only record we’ll ever make, so we wanted to put a bit of romance into it, some Napoleonic folly.
Lawrence apparently committed suicide at Real World studios early on Thursday morning.
James Lawrence, guitarist: born Chichester, West Sussex 25 January 1977; died Box, Wiltshire 15 January 2004.
Copyright 2004 Independent Newspapers UK Limited
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.
2003 – Officials at Six Flags in Darien Lakes, N.Y., ban Marilyn Manson’s Ozzfest appearance in August. The amusement park invoked a contract clause that allows them to restrict artists from performing.
2003 – Veteran pop artist Joe Jackson comes out against New York’s ban on smoking in public places. In an Op/Ed piece in the New York Times titled “Want to Smoke? Go to Hamburg,” the U.K. born, New York City resident says, “Smokers are being demonized and victimized all out of proportion,” and suggests that the law takes away part of Gotham’s charm.
2001 – Insisting the imagery the band uses _ specifically its skeleton mascot “Vic Rattlehead” _ is unsuitable for the nation’s youth, Malaysian authorities ban veteran metal act Megadeth from performing in the country. The band planned to perform Aug. 2 at the Warp Club in the country’s capital city, Kuala Lumpur, in support of its latest album, The World Needs a Hero.
2000 – Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford, and Tony Banks reform as Genesis for a one-off performance at the London Hilton during the British Music Roll of Honour gala, organized by the Music Managers Forum. The act’s manager, Tony Smith receives the Peter Grant Award for outstanding achievement at the event.
2000 – The MP3-swapping Web site Napster bans 317,377 users from using their very popular file-sharing site. The list is determined by Metallica’s allegations that the users have pirated the metal giant’s recordings.
2000 – tourism chiefs in Liverpool were banned from putting up motorway signs saying ‘Liverpool, the Birthplace Of The Beatles’, because the Highways Agency thought the signs would distract motorists.
1998 – A federal judge in St. Louis rules that the Fort Zumwalt High School marching band will not be allowed to play Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” in its ’60s medley. The song had been banned by the high school superintendent on the grounds it promoted drug use. Come to think of it, a brass-heavy version of the song would have certainly driven the Rock Clock to heroin.
1997 – James Brown becomes the first U.S. artist to appear in Lebanon following the recent lift of the ban on U.S. travel to the country. After playing in Beirut, Brown heads to Moscow where he performs in honor of the city’s 850th anniversary.
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