AFRICA FOR AFRICA WORK REACHES GRASS ROOTS

KHARTOUM, Sudan —  USA for Africa and Band Aid are not the only sources of musical charity in the Third World.

This African capital city may not have a reunion of the Who or a transatlantic multivideo Live Aid concert as a charity drawing card, but it does have Hanan Blo Blo. And that is apparently enough.

The anti-famine love songs of the Blo Blo (pronounced, Boola Boola) Sisters may not be “We Are the World,” but African music for Africa has become as chic in the more affluent capitals of this poverty-stricken continent as the anti-famine movement has become in London and Los Angeles.

“With all love, there must be some suffering to make it sweet,” explained Bakri Said, a deputy in the Sudanese Ministry of Information. “Suffering is what we believe is good for loves and that is what all our love songs say,” Said explained with a hangdog grin, as if to say: “Hey, I didn’t make the customs, you know?”

His explanation was as much an apology to the American guests he ushered through this Sudanese Woodstock as it was a description of the kinds of high-squeal lyrics that the most prominent of the three sisters, Hanan Blo Blo, would soon be singing in an outdoor concert next to the Blue Nile.

As seems to be the case with pop music on both sides of the world these days, it was all for charity. The 1 Sudanese pound admission charge (equal to about 40 U.S. cents) that several thousand fans paid to see and hear a set by the Blo Blo band was earmarked to aid Sudan’s 1 to 2 million famine refugees.

The concerts came after Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, giving the outdoor festival a Mardi Gras flavor. Thousands sweated in line in 100-degree weather for a chance to see Hanan Blo Blo.

Moments after an electrified Sudanese jug band began warming up, a dusky latter-day Brenda Lee stepped to the microphone amid cheers and wolf whistles from the post-Ramadan revelers. Hanan Blo Blo warbled high and Hanan Blo Blo warbled low, she shimmied and she dipped. The response from her primarily male audience was barely suppressed lust and awe.

According to officials like Said, the West’s recent musical answers to East Africa’s 13-year-old drought are simply duplications of what the Sudanese and other African nations have known for some time. Big stars can persuade fans to be charitable when nobody else, including the government, can.

Their Arabic yodel aside, the Blo Blo Sisters could be the Pointer Sisters. In fact, the only striking difference between Hanan and, say, Pat Benatar or Madonna was the dragon tattoos wrapped around her wrists and ankles.

“That means she is married,” Said explained. “But, what did I tell to you? The first words she sang were ‘I am suffering. . . .’ ”

As are several hundred thousand of her fellow Africans--most of whom have never heard of, let alone heard, Western charity super-groups like Band Aid and USA for Africa.

In fact, until last month, “We Are the World” wasn’t even available in most African record stores. It can now be had in Nairobi for 24 Kenyan shillings (about $2), but it is far from being a best seller.

“People want to have it for a unique souvenir,” said Aldaf Dadani, owner of Assanaud’s Music Shop in Nairobi. “They say ‘I must have it!’ ”

What most of Dadani’s customers say they really must have is the African Heritage Band, Billy Ocean, DeBarge or something called “Zaire music” before they must have anything else. One such current Zaire hit is much like the early ‘60s U.S. hit “El Watusi,” but the refrain has been changed from “Watusi” to “Mobutu.”

Two months ago, Kenya looked as though it might have its own anti-famine Live Aid-style concert. Promoters initiated a plan to hold an outdoor concert, heavy on local talent, in the Ngong Hills, just outside the city limits of Nairobi. There was even some talk of bringing over a few Western recording artists to sweeten the international flavor of the charity bash.

But bandits and Kenya’s panga gangs of youthful thugs tend to roam the Ngong these days and concert organizers couldn’t guarantee fans’ safety, so the Africa for Africa concert was scrapped.

In Nairobi, as elsewhere in East Africa, what sales impact hunger anthems like “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and “We Are the World” have had is diluted by the high consumer demand for local musicians like a Zaire band or a Hanan Blo Blo.

But the single biggest marketing problem a record company representative faces in the Third World is bootlegging.

“It’s a huge problem,” CBS Records International’s African director Ron Andrews said. Andrews, who markets CBS records--including “We Are the World”--throughout Africa, said the sale of any original recording is now the exception, not the rule. Virtually every taxi driver in Nairobi or Addis Ababa has an in-dash stereo tape deck nowadays and almost all of them are playing bootleg cassettes.

Further, musical tastes that vary widely from country to country are reflective of a nationalistic selfishness when it comes to charity too. Andrews said that Kenyans who plunk down their 24 shillings for “We Are the World” are loath to see any of it going to neighboring Ethiopia.

Likewise, the Mercato area music shops of Addis Ababa will probably refuse to turn over their receipts to help the starving outside Ethiopia--if and when they ever get a shipment of “We Are the World” singles flown in from the West.

The manager of the Ambassel Music Shop in Addis Ababa said he had never heard of USA for Africa, though he did know the work of U.S. reggae recording artist Freddie MacGregor and country singer Kenny Rogers.

And, of course, Michael Jackson, whose bootleg visage appeared on T-shirts, posters and cassettes throughout the store.