Protest Concerts Are an American Tradition. The Gaza Ones Have Been Rather Quiet.
In early January, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, a concert benefit for Palestine and Sudan conjured all the fury of an acoustic night at the local coffee shop. Musicians played stripped-down songs on a stage decorated with rugs, floor lamps, and couches. Members of the audience, mostly 20-somethings and teens, leaned in and filmed intimate performances by their favorite cult artists.
But the quiet broke late in the evening when a woman with a mane of red curls walked onstage. Shrieks and screams rang out as people recognized the surprise guest: the 27-year-old superstar Chappell Roan.
I’d come to watch precisely because no one of Roan’s stature had been slated to play what have been, to date, the American music world’s only major communal performances in response to the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The concert, titled Artists for Aid, featured a 20-artist lineup of if-you-know-you-know types—such as the buzz band Geese and the TikTok-beloved Ravyn Lenae—plus Shawn Mendes, a recovering pop heartthrob who hasn’t had a hit in years. The previous two installments of Artists for Aid, which took place in 2024 in New Jersey and London, had received scant media attention. I wanted to find out why a war that has sparked intense outrage worldwide had inspired relatively low-wattage and under-the-radar efforts in American music—and whether that might be changing.
Music is the art form most associated with protest, and its history is full of united actions against war and humanitarian crises. Think of Woodstock-era sung-and-spoken condemnations of the Vietnam War, the 1980s megaconcerts and charity singles inspired by famine in Ethiopia and apartheid in South Africa, and the Rock Against Bush compilations that challenged America’s invasion of Iraq. Only a few years ago, pop music overflowed with sloganeering lyrics and concert rallies related to Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and Donald Trump. But in the 2020s, much of that energy has mellowed—or at least been dispersed into individuals’ scattered statements and social-media posts.
Gaza is a big part of why. The 2023 Hamas attacks that killed some 1,200 people in Israel, including 378 people at the Nova music festival, spurred a military response that has decimated Gaza and resulted in at least 70,000 deaths. Among countries historically allied with Israel—prime among them the U.S.—the fallout has inflamed tensions over free expression. Though polls show that a majority of Americans now have an unfavorable view of Israel—an 11-point increase from before the war—the ensuing protests have faced unusual social and legal consequences. Universities whose students demonstrated against the war have been subject to sweeping government investigations and sanctions justified as efforts against hate speech. Activists have been targeted for deportation on the basis of protests they’ve been involved in or, in at least one case, because of an op-ed they’d written.
A confluence of factors have made Gaza a particularly risky situation to speak out about. One is the clear and rising tide of anti-Semitism worldwide. Defenders of Israel have often argued that a critique of Zionism is an attack on all Jews—thereby collapsing the distinctions among, for example, the bigoted conspiracy theories of Louis Farrakhan, the extremism of fringe activists who cheer for Hamas, and the moral objections levied by mainstream voices for Palestinian rights (many of whom are Jewish themselves). The bloody history of the conflict has made it so that some people interpret the language of Palestinian liberation as a call for the wanton murder of Israelis. These dynamics have been leveraged by lobbyists for Israel and by politicians of both major U.S. parties to subject the broader pro-Palestine movement to a level of scrutiny way beyond what other contemporary causes have been subject to. Cultural institutions and businesses looking to avoid controversy are motivated to embrace that scrutiny.
The music world has learned this a number of times. Last April, the R&B singer Kehlani was disinvited from a concert at Cornell after a pro-Israel student group flagged her history of strident anti-Zionism, including a music video of hers featuring the phrase “Long live the intifada.” Intifada is an Arabic word for “uprising” that many hear as a call for violence against Jews. Her concert in Central Park was later canceled after the office of New York City’s then-Mayor Eric Adams raised concerns about public safety. In a video message prior to the second cancellation, Kehlani called herself “not anti-Semitic” but rather “anti-genocide.” She also alluded to losing other career opportunities because of her criticism of Israel.
Kehlani, a singer known for her queer sex jams and fixation on astrology, hardly fits the stereotype of a militant. Some of music’s most headline-grabbing advocates for Palestine have been more extreme and faced more extreme consequences. The Irish band Kneecap is a rap trio steeped in the history of Irish republicanism—one member wears a balaclava. They had signaled admiration for terrorist groups—“Up Hamas, up Hezbollah,” shouted one member at a November 2024 concert—before controversy erupted over their pro-Palestine statements at Coachella 2025. After U.K. police opened a terrorism investigation (resulting in a charge against one member that was eventually dropped) and the group lost its visa sponsor in the U.S., Kneecap said they have never supported Hamas or Hezbollah, and that they “condemn all attacks on civilians, always.”
Another example: Last year, the front man of the rap duo Bob Vylan chanted “Death, death to the IDF!” at the Glastonbury Festival in the U.K. Following condemnation from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the revocation of their visas by the U.S. State Department, the band put out a statement saying: “We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs or any other race or group of people. We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine.” Later, when one of its concert crowds tried to get a “Death to IDF” chant going, Bob Vylan’s vocalist encouraged them to instead say “Free Palestine,” lest the band get in more trouble.
Performers who flirt with murderous rhetoric and ideologies hardly make ideal mascots for the pro-Palestine movement, or for anyone else who advocates to end, not intensify, violence in the Middle East. Even so, these controversies have demonstrated that what artists say about this issue is not treated with the deference that creative expression is traditionally afforded in democracies. Hip-hop, rock and roll, and even country music are full of revolutionary rhetoric and bloodthirsty threats. As First Amendment advocates have had to repeatedly point out lately, a legal distinction exists between making statements and committing or materially supporting violence. When government officials weigh in on what’s acceptable to say onstage, it not only limits the definition of free speech but sends a cautionary message to all kinds of cultural figures: artists, labels, venues.
The music industry wrestled with tensions related to Palestine before October 7. Boycott campaigns against Israel, which have been under way for decades, garnered support from artists including Elvis Costello, Patti Smith, and Questlove. In 2012, pro-Israel forces in the entertainment industry formed the anti-boycott activist group Creative Community for Peace, which was supported by industry figures such as the famous artist manager Scooter Braun and the Atlantic Music Group CEO Elliot Grainge.
Since October 7, many pro-Palestinian artists have said that they feel at odds with prevailing attitudes in their industry. Brian Eno said on Instagram that one of the biggest regrets of his career was that “so many of us have remained silent about Palestine. Often that silence has come from fear—real fear—that speaking out could provoke a backlash, close doors or end a career.” Last year, the trip-hop group Massive Attack formed an alliance intended to support pro-Palestinian artists in the face of “intimidation” from within the industry. More than 1,000 artists and labels have backed a new boycott effort to geo-block their music from being streamed in Israel.
But signing a petition is one thing, and organizing a show is another. The storied benefit shows and protests of music history were logistical undertakings that involved many parties—booking agents, promoters, venues, multiple artists. When it comes to Gaza, pulling off such an effort might be especially complex, given how viewpoints and appetites for blowback will vary from party to party. Nevertheless, Eno helped put on a benefit, Together for Palestine, in London last year. And Artists for Aid has emerged as America’s primary musical response—cautiously.
The Artists for Aid shows are benefits, not protests. They have paired advocacy for Palestine with advocacy for the people of Sudan, where a civil war has raged since 2023 and cost at least 150,000 lives. In Los Angeles, $5.5 million were raised for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund and the Sudanese American Physicians Association. The model Bella Hadid, one of the two hosts (the other was the actor Pedro Pascal), spoke about “families living through unimaginable loss, displacement, hunger, violence.” The Palestinian American poet Noor Hindi and the Sudanese American poet Safia Elhillo described the devastation of their homelands. But none of the speeches named a protagonist—a state, a leader—responsible for the destruction they mourned.
This circumspection was by design. “I’m trying to be really careful about the way that I present these concerts to the world,” Mustafa, the 29-year-old singer-songwriter who’d organized the venture, told me the day after the concert. Although he anticipated that some critics would find Artists for Aid to be too soft-focus, too vague in its objectives, Mustafa intentionally discouraged political callouts from stage. The shows were meant to give musicians an opportunity to “communicate their solidarity through song,” he said. “Because that is the thing they practice their whole life. That is the language that they know.”
The circumstances we met in reminded me that the Palestinian cause isn’t without behind-the-scenes support. Mustafa, formerly known as Mustafa the Poet, was staying at a stunning mansion in Bel Air that a donor had rented in order to house a few of the artists who played the show. Pizza boxes were strewn about from the night before, and a few straggling musicians and associates were puttering around, dipping their feet in the infinity pool. Mustafa’s 2024 debut album, Dunya—a folk memoir about growing up as a devout Muslim in a violent Toronto housing project as the son of immigrants from Sudan—was wildly acclaimed. He’s a pop insider who’s had a birthday dinner thrown for him by Drake and who has helped write songs for Justin Bieber, The Weeknd, and the Jonas Brothers.
Despite that industry clout, he told me, he had trouble securing a venue for the benefit. Mustafa said he and his team had approached multiple locations in the Los Angeles area, but most declined the booking without explanation. At one point, after the show had been announced but before a stage had been confirmed, he considered canceling it and releasing “the list of all of the venues that refuse to accept me.” The problem wasn’t demand: The show had sold out within minutes, and scalpers listed tickets online with exorbitant markups. Mustafa had wanted to book an arena that could fit tens of thousands of people. Instead, Artists for Aid ended up in the 6,300-person Shrine Auditorium. “We weren’t in the Shrine by choice,” he said. “Really we were in the Shrine by circumstance.”
Confirming performers wasn’t simple either. According to Mustafa, he secured most of the evening’s lineup himself, coordinating with artists directly via text message, sometimes to the surprise of their managers. But it didn’t seem to be the full bill he’d hoped for. A number of artists who’d signed on to perform backed out just before the show’s announcement, offering what he felt were flimsy excuses. One musician—“I swear to God, one of the bigger artists in the world,” Mustafa said—declined by saying that they didn’t want to invite “the sting of the establishment.”
Still, some of the bigger artists in the world did pop up. Roan had called the singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus, who was on the bill, a few days before the show and asked to duet with her. The two ended up playing a wistful cover of the Magnetic Fields’ wry ballad “The Book of Love.” Backstage, Olivia Rodrigo posed for photos. (A few weeks later, Rodrigo announced that she’d covered that same Magnetic Fields song for a compilation album to raise money for War Child UK, a charity helping kids in conflict zones worldwide.)
[Read: Students yelled at me. I’m fine.]
The presence of these Gen Z icons seemed to reflect a generational divide when it comes to musical activism. For years, the most famous mainstream benefits have been headlined by a class of musicians associated with the Democratic establishment—Bruce Springsteen, Katy Perry, Alicia Keys. Over the past year, many in that class have continued to work in the familiar mode of anti-Trump resistance, as with Springsteen’s new song about the turmoil in Minneapolis. But Gaza has defied the dynamics of party politics; Roan rejected calls to endorse the Democrats in 2024 because of the party’s support of Israel, among other issues (though she said she voted for Kamala Harris anyway). Artists for Aid was for and largely by the generation that upended American political discourse after October 7 with campus sit-ins, the generation that hardly seems daunted by the crackdowns against them.
Some in the audience wore keffiyehs or T-shirts indicating their activist bona fides. But most just looked like fashionable music fans, flaunting boots and baggy denim while taking selfies. They screamed out wildly for Dacus, Daniel Caesar, Clairo, Faye Webster, and Omar Apollo—young gods of the bedroom-pop pantheon that has flourished in the streaming era. Many of those musicians are among the more than 600 people who’ve signed on to the Artists4Ceasefire effort that began in 2023.
Those artists largely sang their own songs, but certain lyrics and sounds took on a special resonance. The show opened with the Geese front man Cameron Winter, the current It Boy of indie rock and a 23-year-old Jewish person whose music is filled with references to war and God (he played another, smaller Gaza benefit in Ridgewood, Queens, not long after). He sang a gorgeous rendition of an unreleased track called “If You Turn Back Now.” Its fluttering piano runs sent a message: Settle in; focus; feel something.
Is it enough to let the music speak? I’d gone into the concert suspecting it to be a tragically late and modest effort—coming, as it did, after a cease-fire had been brokered and, despite continued violence in the region, a host of other crises had grabbed the public’s attention. And the show itself hardly turned out to be bold in its presentation. But as I watched artist after artist, from a variety of genres, step up, play, and hand the mic on to the next singer—as other performers watched, swaying their heads, from couches around the stage—my cynicism faded. The overlap between an artistic scene, a demographic wave, and a political movement was being made visible and tangible. Many of the musicians and audience members belonged to a generation that’s often stereotyped as languishing in apathy and isolation—but whose indignation about the suffering in Gaza has far outpaced that of other generations. And given all the ambient discouragement against speaking up about this particular cause, solidarity isn’t just a buzzword. It matters that so many of music’s rising guard have gone on the record.
In the weeks since then, I’ve thought back to Artists for Aid’s conscientious approach while a broader thaw has taken place in America regarding protest. The pushback against immigration agents in Minneapolis has been peaceful, coordinated, and focused—and, it seems, has gotten results. At least some of the politicians, celebrities, and business leaders who have fallen into silence or acquiescence during the past year of multifront overreach from the Trump administration are finally saying that something’s amiss in America, if in measured language. Gaza showed how power brokers from the White House on down seem eager for pretexts to punish dissent in ways that create a chilling effect, and that the hottest rhetoric from activists can be exactly that pretext. The effective protest movements to emerge from these circumstances will show wisdom in choosing when to shout and when to communicate by other means.