Madonna’s Celebration Tour Pays Heart-Felt Tribute to Those Lost to AIDS
Madonna’s Celebration Tour Pays Heart-Felt Tribute to Those Lost to AIDS
With help from The AIDS Memorial, Madonna shows the HIV/AIDS community that she cares—and still carries her personal losses close.
The loss of colleagues, friends and lovers to #AIDS played a huge role in Madonna’s formative years.
She became a champion for people living with HIV.
She paid tribute to those who died in one of the most moving sequences of the #MadonnaCelebrationTour.
We carry them with us. Madonna has always been there for the HIV/AIDS community and she has been one of the most public of cheerleaders for those with a medical condition that lives off of silence, fear, stigma and shame. Over the weekend Madonna kicked off her Celebration Tour in London. In a concert that highlights music spanning her 40-year career, she took time to pay homage to the HIV/AIDS community by showing the faces of those we’ve lost. Pink News described the tribute:
“While singing in an open-air box that moved across the stage, pictures of those who lost their lives [to the epidemic] appeared on screens across the arena, including artists Keith Haring and Martin Burgoyne, photographer and director Herb Ritts, singer-songwriter Sylvester and legendary Queen frontman Freddie Mercury.
“Madonna, 65, embarked on the moving tribute after performing the comparatively upbeat dance hit ‘Holiday,’ which served as an anthem of respite for the LGBTQ+ community during the crisis.
“During the performance, one of the dancers surrounding Madonna dropped to the ground, as if lifeless. The singer then placed a sheet over the performer and transitioned into the moving rendition of ‘Live to Tell.’”
The images were submitted to and enshrined online by the AIDS Memorial, a beloved online resource where people pay tribute to loved ones by sharing some of the joys and struggles about HIV’s impact on their lives. #madonna #celebrationtour #sylvester #cookiemueller #robertmapplethorpe #AIDS
