NEW YORK — K’naan kicked off a free concert in Central Park on Saturday evening that also included performances by Black Keys and John Legend to call attention to poverty worldwide.
Dubbed the Global Citizen Festival, the concert lineup featured Neil Young, Band of Horses and Foo Fighters as well. Video of the event was streamed worldwide as about 60,000 music fans poured into the park.
The concert included a surprise appearance from Legend, who played “Imagine” at a piano on the Great Lawn stage, a short walk from where the song’s author, John Lennon, once lived.
The concert was scheduled around the meeting of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, and organizers used an innovative approach to ticket distribution so that many concertgoers were forced to learn about an array of global problems, such as polio, malaria, child mortality and polluted drinking water, in order to get a ticket.
Anyone wanting free tickets had to register at , which then required users to watch videos or read information about poverty-related issues. Each time material was consumed, users could earn points toward a drawing for tickets. Points were also accumulated by sharing information via Twitter or Facebook.
Organizers said more than 71,000 people had signed up online, resulting in more than 3.5 million page views.
