DOCUMENTARY: Music for Minnesota
a concert documentary
by Alex Tepper
Photography by Morgan Pemble & Alex Tepper
featuring
BEEN STELLAR Spotify · Apple Music · Instagram
sweet93 Spotify · Apple Music · Instagram
TRUMAN FLYER Spotify · Apple Music · Instagram
GRUMPY Spotify · Apple Music · Instagram
Music for Minnesota is a benefit concert series raising funds for the Immigrant Defense Network based in Minneapolis produced by Feels Good to Do Things and 1-800-girlfriend. The first edition took place at Baby’s All Right Jan 28, 2026.
“The first modern benefit concert was the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971, which proved that these concerts could raise large amounts of money for their cause.”
And the earliest noted occurrences of benefit concerts as a fundraising tool date back to 1749 with a show put on by George Handel for Britain’s Foundling Hospital for abandoned babies and children whose parents were not married. (shame!)
The concert was “so successful he repeated it every year for the rest of his life. The Foundling charity survives today as Coram, who still work to improve the lives of children.”
Then in 1985, Live-Aid became one of the most famous and outwardly successful examples of such efforts raising an estimated $245 million for famine relief in Ethiopia. 200 years of technological innovation after Handel’s example meant the event was able to be viewed by 1.5 to 1.9 billion people globally.
But time has also proven the marketing of worldwide benefit concerts and the subsequent donation of ticket sales to be a complicated endeavor. British-Ghanaian vocalist Fuse ODG writes about such charity initiatives for African aid:
Ed Sheeran has said upon reflection “he would rather not be on [a] 40th-anniversary version of Band Aid charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?.”
Muddying waters further, the BBC published a misleading report in 2010 alleging the Live Aid funds were partially diverted to Tigrayan rebels to buy weapons. It took seven months of review before the news organization issued an apology.
But while Live-Aid and the Concert for Bangladesh attempt an ambitious international, cross-cultural unity, Music for Minnesota seeks a local one. I believe this concert has as much to do with New York City as it does Minnesota.
Sam Slocum of Been Stellar
Inspired by the Minnesotan community’s civic activism in defense of their neighbors, throwing this show was a suggestion of how we, too, can be constructive with our anger on a community level in NYC.
A possible vision for how, together, we can leverage our respective skills to create positive change. How we can raise funds in order to simultaneously help people and wield economic power. To demand from our representatives they treat people in our country with human dignity.
It is also a hypothesis in coalition building. A suggestion for how our New York City music community can reach out and hold hands with other likeminded communities throughout the country.
Music scenes filled with forward thinking, locally minded individuals are everywhere. In every city and maybe every small town in America. They’re made of people who take a special interest in art and music, sure, but I think that is the symptom not the cause.
After a couple decades playing music, inhabiting DIY venues and researching disparate scenes, I posit the core value of these music communities is simply the love of people.
Chloe Kohanski of sweet93
People who are unabashedly themselves make us all feel less alone. Within the music community, the knowledge that our differences are mere window dressing have been deposited long ago, deep in our psyches.
And if New York City is in fact the greatest city in the world, it is not because of its ability to form a line for coffee. Though it is certainly in part due to the access our immigrant communities provide us to the whole earth just by walking out our doors.
New York City is home to the highest number of foreign born residents in the world at 3,302,330 people.
Most musicians not named Morrissey know it’s within someone’s uniqueness that you can find the deepest sense of your own self, the universe, God or whatever cosmic goodness you’re using to locate your purpose in this life.
By linking music communities, I believe this value can be quite literally amplified.
And through events like Music for Minnesota, New York can tangibly be connected to organizations on the ground in Minneapolis.
When looking for an organization to support, local Minnesotans directed us towards the Immigrant Defense Network: a “network of 90+ nonprofits, grassroots groups, and advocates.”
This first event raised $4,566.50 and sold out with 72 hours notice. And via screenings, an event captured in one city can be spread to another.
Perhaps via livestreams, we can even throw one unified event across the country, adding communities in Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, and Bozeman to the chain. Each city impacting nationally, but thinking locally.
Arm-in-arm, imagine what we can do and who we can help.
And who we can hold accountable.
