Decaydance/Fueled by Ramen RecordsMtvU is hosting its first ever Campus Invasion Music Festival, which includes 6-hour concerts in some of the largest college cities in America. One of them is in Philadelphia’s Penn’s Landing on Sunday, April 29 at 3:30 p.m.
The Campus Invasion Music Festival is an extension of mtvU’s Campus Invasion Tour which has brought up-and-coming artists to college students for the past 10 years. This year’s festival is part of the two-and-a-half year campaign to raise awareness for the atrocities in Sudan.
“We saw that the main stream media was not reporting on this situation in Darfur whatsoever and we saw it and felt an obligation to serve as a megaphone for college students to enable them to spread this word far and wide and be able to know the lines of further action to support to help end this crisis,” Jason Rzepka, manager for communications for mtvU, said in a phone interview with The Loquitur.
The Penn’s Landing concert includes acts from Dashboard Confessional, Gym Class Heroes, Augustana, K-Os, Kidz in the Hall and Kenna.
“We are beside ourselves with the artists that we got to participate,” Rzepka said. “When we look at this lineup, it’s very diverse, it’s very eclectic and I think it really represents the eclectic piece of the college audience.”
The other two concerts that are part of this campaign are held in Austin, Texas on April 22 and Atlanta, Georgia on April 27. They include artists such as Fabolous, The Shins, Rick Ross and The Academy Is. to name a few.
MtvU has partnered up with various organizations like the Save Darfur Coalition, Amnesty International Crisis Group and the National Refugee Committee in their fight against genocide in Darfur.
“We began noticing on college campuses across the country that college students were mobilizing at a grassroots level to really begin screaming at the top of their lungs, ‘World, pay attention! There’s a genocide happening on our watch,'” Rzepka said.
Rzepka said that mtvU not only raises awareness with their Campus Invasion campaign, but also through the airwaves of their TV channel in which they have sent out three students to Darfur to film a documentary called, “Translating Genocide.” They also offer forums and ways to get involved in the crisis through their website www.mtvu.com.
“I think that you would not see the national attention today that you do see for this issue if not for college student’s efforts,” he said.
Tickets are sold through mtvU’s website at $15 presale for students and $30 for non-students, the proceeds benefit the Save Darfur Coalition.
Rzepka said that the ideas for the concerts came to them about one year ago. After that they found cities that “made sense” as well as artists that fell across the spectrum. They plan on traveling to different areas of the country, and mentioned Boston as a future Campus Invasion Music Festival. He said the objective is to bring a day of live music to college students of Philadelphia.
Rzepka said, “We think it will be well attended and we think it will be a great time for a great cause.”
