Can Music Save the World?

If Adam Yauch were wearing a suit, he'd fit right in at your average corporate staff meeting. With his close-cropped hair, dark-ringed eyes, and serious expression, the 32-year-old Beastie Boy could easily be a young ad exec rather than a member of one of the country's most popular rap groups.

On this swampy Saturday morning in Washington, DC, Yauch is submitting to press grilling under hot TV lights not for his music but for his activism: He co-founded the Milarepa Fund, which mobilizes young Americans in the cause of nonviolent social change and organizes the annual Tibetan Freedom Concert. Yauch became interested in the Tibetans' struggle after meeting refugees from the country during a trek in Nepal.

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The fund is named for Jetsun Milarepa, the first "common" Tibetan to attain enlightenment in a single lifetime, back in the 11th century. After an unruly youth, Milarepa devoted his life to using music to teach compassion. Comparisons between the fund's namesake and the world-weary Yauch—who has a gray-hair quotient similar to fellow Tibetan activist Richard Gere's—are easy to make. MCA, as he's known to fans, has clearly come a long way from the Beasties' "Fight for Your Right to Party" days.

The two previous Tibetan Freedom Concerts—first in San Francisco, and last year in New York—raised $1.25 million for Milarepa. This year's star-studded RFK Stadium concert seems destined to make double that figure. Fans snapped up 110,000 tickets at $50 a pop six hours after they went on sale, making the event the second-largest benefit in history, behind 1985's Live Aid.

A lot of star power has been marshaled for this morning's press conference: Yauch, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead, reggae star Mutabaruka, and Sean Lennon (following the peace-activist footsteps of his parents, John and Yoko) sit alongside Xiao Qiang, executive director of the New York­based nonprofit Human Rights in China. There's also Chinese democratic activist Wei Jingsheng, Tibetan monk Palden Gyatso, and Kay Dougherty, the national head of Students for a Free Tibet, which recently organized a successful boycott of Holiday Inn after it opened a hotel in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, and staffed it with Chinese workers.

When one reporter suggests that, hey, maybe lots of these kids are here just for the music, 22-year-old Lennon responds with youthful vehemence, berating the "cynical" attitude: "The media is what controls our society today. Look around you at all these people broadcasting worldwide—if all of this doesn't influence our culture, I don't know what will."

A short history of China's actions against Tibet since its 1949 invasion: In search of more land and domination of the strategically located Tibetan plateau, the Chinese government has destroyed 6,000 monasteries and sold off the country's natural resources, meanwhile punishing Tibetans for any attempts to assert their cultural or religious identity. More than a million Tibetans have died due to famine, torture, and forced labor. One particularly chilling symbol of China's policy toward the Tibetans is the kidnapping three years ago of the Panchen Lama (who was 6 years old at the time)—he's the youngest political prisoner in the world.

Other than raising money, the weekend's objective is to convince President Clinton that on his upcoming trip to China (the first visit by an American president since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre), he must persuade Chinese president Jiang Zemin to hold talks with the Dalai Lama, Tibet's leader-in-exile.

When RFK Stadium isn't full of bodies, it looks surprisingly small. Two enormous TV screens flank two stages. The crowd is a bit thin for the five-minute opening set by monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery and nuns from the Tibetan Nuns Project, who stand and chant before a huge Budweiser banner. MTV News operates from a giant platform in the center of the stadium floor with an enormous, silver-plated, rotating logo that's visible from practically every seat.

The weekend's first electric act is Beastie Boys keyboard player Money Mark, modeling the official Tibetan Freedom Festival T-shirt during his 20-minute set. Next up is Mutabaruka, whose dark, bass-heavy, roots reggae is the most overtly political music all weekend. At the press conference earlier, he summed up his motivation in one elegant sound bite: "The freedom of one is dependent on the freedom of all."

It's heartening to see how busy the gold-shirted volunteers are as they solicit signatures for pro-Tibetan postcards to the White House.

Tibetan monk Gyatso tells the story of his 30-year imprisonment by the Chinese. You couldn't ask for a more adorable symbol: He's a tiny man with a round face and big ears, who wears an expression of calm even when he's describing being hung from handcuffs and splashed with boiling water. Other gruesome tortures involve serrated handcuffs and electric cattle prods. "The power is in your hands," his translator says as pictures of the violent Chinese occupation flash on two huge screens.

Then it's KRS-1: The stadium floor transforms into 50,000 writhing pink snakes, as those in the front rows pump their fists in the air. The audience is uniformly white, college-age, and scantily clad; there are lots of "Co-ed Naked Lacrosse" T-shirts on view. Most of the sartorial accessories are borrowed from a previous generation—tie-dye, long hair, macramé chokers. KRS-1 quotes the Dalai Lama before he heads off stage: "Be patient.... Don't hate. Show love." Two shirtless white guys near me start to break dance.