For the second year, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc. is hosting the “Save the Horn Benefit Concert,” featuring rapper Big Sean.

The purpose of the concert is to benefit those who live in the Horn of Africa, where citizens face some of the worst famine and drought zones in the world. The concert will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Friday in Goldstein Auditorium.

Big Sean has produced one studio album and his second, “Hall of Fame,” will be released later this year. He is known for hit collaborations such as “Mercy,” featuring Kanye West, Pusha T and 2 Chainz, and “As Long As You Love Me” with teen heartthrob Justin Bieber.

More than 1,000 of 1,500 tickets available were sold at the Schine Box Office within the first two days of being on sale.

Brown Bonsu, a graduate student in the information management program, was the committee head for the first benefit concert last year, and has been guiding his younger fraternity brothers through the planning.

Under Bonsu’s watch, last year’s concert featuring Fabolous and Cassidy was a sell-out with 1,500 tickets sold.

A majority of the concert’s proceeds will be donated to Relief International, a nonprofit organization that “provides emergency relief, rehabilitation and development assistance to victims of natural disasters and civil conflicts,” according to its website.

Using concert proceeds, Relief International will purchase and send nutrition packs to people in the Horn of Africa. The organization provides citizens with meal packets containing daily nutrients they wouldn’t otherwise receive.

During the first seven years of his life, Bonsu lived with his two siblings and parents in a small house in Ghana. Bonsu remembers the lifestyle he once had, and said it has taught him that even though one’s situation may seem bad, there is always someone who has it worse.

“Growing up, I didn’t have the easiest access to basic utilities that most Americans have,” he said. “I grew up in a single-family house — (it wasn’t) really a house. It was literally one room.”

Bonsu said one thing Americans don’t think twice about and take advantage of is water. In most parts of Africa, he said, something as simple as taking a shower turns into a multi-step process. One has to fetch the water from a well or other natural body, heat it to a comfortable temperature and then — finally — proceed to wash himself or herself.

“(It’s) the simple things you have in life in America that you don’t have over there,” he said.

Phi Beta Sigma’s motto is “Culture for service, service for humanity,” and Bonsu said this benefit concert is a great example of its service in action.

Said Bonsu: “It’s about helping others.”

Published on March 20, 2013 at 8:22 pm

Contact Allie: ajcaren@syr.edu