Faculty
Music
Supervisor Name
Dr. April Morris, Dr. Emily Ansari
Keywords
benefit concert, Ukraine, community, community engagement, protest
Description
In the months following Russia's February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Canadian music community responded by hosting a number of benefit concerts. In contrast to the precedents set by well-known, large-scale benefit concerts such as 1985's "Live Aid", these concerts were strongly rooted in the local context of the events' hosts and centred the voices and experiences of members of their beneficiary community. Combined with the potential of these events to allow individuals and groups to combat feelings of helplessness and to serve as forms of resistance against the Russian regime, this has allowed these concerts to create and strengthen links between local and broader international communities.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Dr. April Morris and Dr. Emily Ansari for their supervision of this project, and to the Western University Undergraduate Student Research Internship program.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Document Type
Paper
Included in
"A Gesture of Solidarity Through Music": Local and International Community in Canadian Benefit Concerts for Ukraine
In the months following Russia's February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Canadian music community responded by hosting a number of benefit concerts. In contrast to the precedents set by well-known, large-scale benefit concerts such as 1985's "Live Aid", these concerts were strongly rooted in the local context of the events' hosts and centred the voices and experiences of members of their beneficiary community. Combined with the potential of these events to allow individuals and groups to combat feelings of helplessness and to serve as forms of resistance against the Russian regime, this has allowed these concerts to create and strengthen links between local and broader international communities.