Orion Series in Fine Arts Lecture
Dr. Klisala Harrison (BMus ’97)
Ethnomusicologist; Academy of Finland Research Scholar at the University of Helsinki

How Music Can Help: Human Rights Deficits and Early Deaths in Urban Poverty

How can music be used in urban poverty in efforts to promote human rights? In a special lecture-presentation, Dr. Klisala Harrison will look at how music can benefit urban poor in life-affirming ways and how it has been used in Canadian efforts to address human rights deficits occurring in poverty. Taking examples from popular and Indigenous music, this talk critically contemplates approaches, challenges and successes of using music to benefit homeless and street-involved people in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside over several decades.

The human rights to culture and health of women and of Indigenous people are considered in Harrison’s research, as is how the concept of human rights might be interpreted and even violated in musical contexts. Approaches she will discuss in her lecture include how music is used as part of the Indigenous Red Road to addictions recovery as well as how women’s rights issues, including the problem of missing Indigenous women, are tackled through protest music and innovative popular music programming.

Klisala Harrison, a UVic School of Music alumna, is visiting from Finland where she is Academy of Finland Research Scholar at the University of Helsinki. Her main research interest is how music may be used to address concrete social problems.