Project 1: Migrant Music in Phoenix

Outline:

The main research question we are trying to answer is: How does the upbringing and cultural background of immigrant artists affect the music they create and play? Since the beginning of time music has been something that every culture has their own unique version of. Over time in every different culture around the world variations have been created by different generations. Whether this is due to migration, or any other life changing event. It is still a unique variation of that person's cultural music. This is why we want to answer the question: How does the upbringing and cultural background of immigrant artists affect the music they create and play? The music they play is simply not just a representation of their culture. It is more like a musical time capsule because the way they create and play their music today is sometimes the result of one, two, and sometimes three or more generations of music being played and new styles and variations being created based on all of their life experiences. Furthermore, we also seek to answer the question: How does this music affect the local communities and future generations of artists? We wanted to answer this question because music is always changing and evolving even inside one culture. We wanted to learn the impact that this had on the younger generation. How it shapes their childhood and young adult life. This is because for many, music is another form of communication. It is much more than just a simple song. A lot of the time it tells the story, a story of a child's father or great grandfather. Or maybe it is the story of their culture and where they came from and how they got to where they are today. This not only affects the younger generation of artist’s it also has an impact on the communities that they play in. Music is a universal language even if you can understand the words you understand the feeling it gives you.  We ultimately hope to gain a better understanding of the connection between music and migration and how migration affects the music that these artist’s create and play. We will use our concert and website to engage and educate the local community on this topic. We see this as an important research question with great public value since music is widely considered a universal language that can bridge communities all while bringing people together. 

Project Description:

Our project will be in the form of a concert that we will be having with a local Ukrainian artist named, Max Tovstyi who is a musician and songwriter for the band The Heavy Crawls which is a mix of blues rock, stoner, psychedelic, and progressive rock. We decided to go with Max Tovstyi because he was the first local artist in the Phoenix metropolitan area that would work with us and come out to help us fulfill our goal of having a concert at ASU. We chose this specific art form as well because it fulfilled the requirement of our project of having local immigrant artists perform for us. Another reason we decided to go this route is the fact that rock appears to a broader range of people and gives us the opportunity to give people good music to listen to that people attending the concert might enjoy. Not only that but we are also giving the artists exposure to the ASU Tempe campus as well with it being near the Memorial Union building where hundreds of people are walking by each day. Our project will have an impact on the community by exposing this local artists to more people and maybe help him obtain a boost in his musician career. Another impact of our project will be showing that music can help cross the cultural diversity that we have and also be an example of how music blends different cultures together and brings us closer as individuals. This would be the main goal of this project which is to show that music can help cross cultural barriers that we may experience with each other in our day to day lives and hopefully help us obtain a better understanding of each other's cultures and look at them from a different perspective all together. 

Community Impact/Engagement:

The community engagement aspect of our project will take the form of a short concert on the 20th  of April, at the North Stage of the Memorial Union, from around 11am to 1pm. Our decision to choose this method of engagement was quite clear from the very start, since it is the most representative of the art-form we have based our overarching project theme on, which is music. We have invited a Ukrainian artist named Max Tovstyi to perform his music at this concert, as well as include a story-telling aspect to touch upon the migratory topic upon which we have centered our research, while also mentioning his personal experiences with the war in Ukraine. Prior to the actual concert, some of our team members, depending on their availability and schedules, will be manning a table at the SDFC fields at the upcoming Earth Festival on April 20th, alongside a number of booths, where we will be handing out flyers and spreading information about our concert and the project as a whole.