Lots of rock stars have been associated with campaigns for world peace over the years, but former Boney M singer Marcia Barrett has been doing some frontline peace work by performing a concert in a village in the South Ossetia part of Georgia (the country not the US state) where there has been much violence in recent times as rebels fight for independence. Georgian authorities asked Barrett to play the concert in a small frontline village near the rebel's stronghold of Tskhinvali in a bid to bring together rival communities, and thousands of locals reportedly attended the gig.
Speaking before the event, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili told the BBC: "We hope that we'll lure out people from their trenches, force them to drop [their] Kalashnikovs, come here and dance with the others and understand that nothing is as nice as peace, nothing is as nice as reconciliation. This place was only famous for killings, violence, crime past and present. And now it's like adding some new thing, it's looking much more colourful, much less violent, just normal, and being normal is such a novelty here".
Given her musical heritage (let us not forget the history class pop song that is 'Rasputin'), you might think Barrett had some connections with the war torn area of the former Soviet Union, but she doesn't and she admits she doesn't know a huge amount about the area or its current political situation. She told the Beeb she was doing the gig because: "It's a peace festival I really feel honoured to be invited to come and take part".
It should be noted Boney M have long had a following in the former USSR, with their songs being among the few approved under the old Communist rule, and the peace gig in South Ossetia was billed as a Boney M gig, which in itself isn't without controversy given that no other members of Boney M were involved, and some would say Barrett's band mate Liz Mitchell, who was the main vocalist, has more claim to perform under the name. Though, given the circumstances of this gig, I'm not sure such band name disputes are worthy of consideration.