Music Declares Emergency Canada to Honour Neil Young and Joni Mitchell

Music Declares Emergency Canada will be honouring two powerhouse Canadian artists at a Climate Emergency Concert in Halifax this March. Neil Young and Joni Mitchell will receive the organization's lifetime achievement honours, as part of a Climate Emergency Concert featuring a host of Canadian acts raising awareness about the climate crisis. The concert also serves to announce the first ever Canadian Environmental Music Awards, which will take place later this year.

Canadian artists including Talia Schlanger, Terra Spencer, Braden Lam, India Gailey, Aleksi Campagne and more will perform at the concert, covering classics by Mitchell and Young. The two Canadian singer-songwriters were integral to the founding of a major Canadian environmental organization, Greenpeace. They performed alongside folk singer Phil Ochs at a 1970 benefit concert in Vancouver, held to raise funds for protests of nuclear weapons testing in Amchitka, Alaska. Those protests led to the organization that would become Greenpeace, and in 2009 Greenpeace released a live album of the 1970 concert, Amchitka.

Music Declares Emergency Canada is honouring the two Canadian icons in keeping with their goal of encouraging musicians to speak out about the climate crisis. Musicians like Sarah Harmer, Shad and Lido Pimienta signed onto the group's 2021 National Observer op-ed, which called for greater attention to the climate impact of the music industry, as well as broader policy measures like ending oil and gas subsidies. In 2022, the organization held Canada's first Music Climate Summit, featuring panels and workshops on climate change and the music industry.

The organization is set to launch the Environmental Music Awards later this year, inspired by the Australian Environmental Music Prize. The awards will honour Canadian artists who are promoting climate action and cultural change around the environment. Music Declares Emergency Canada is also seeking partnerships for the awards, and invites interested parties to get in touch.

The Climate Emergency Concert will take place March 17 at the Rebecca Cohn Theatre in Halifax. Find out more about Music Declares Emergency Canada here.