Damon Albarn: Africa Express Tour a ’24-Hour Party’
With an all-star cast, some Olympic-level drinking and a good cause pushing the whole thing along, Damon Albarn's Africa Express tour sounds like a lot of fun -- and Albarn agrees, calling it a "24-hour party."
"It's not necessarily a massive drunken party, but it's one celebrating music and how it makes us feel," Albarn told the Daily Star newspaper. This isn't to say the train transporting the tour is an alcohol-free environment -- quite the opposite, in fact. "There's a bar on the train," he added, explaining that "booze left over from the Olympics that takes up a few carriages."
But for Albarn, who has been organizing Africa Express since 2006, the event is more than just a party -- it's a way to raise awareness of African culture, showing people that the continent is home to far more than just the images of conflict and struggle commonly shown on the news.
"It reminds people that Africa isn't the cliche of this struggling place ravaged by war and famine," Albarn pointed out. "Those are very big problems there, but it's also a very exciting continent, futuristic and forward-thinking in many respects."