The banjo is not typically associated with popular music in Southern California. Neither is the mandolin, accordion or electric blues harmonica. And yet tonight, all of these instruments, along with violin, trombone, trumpet, saxophone, bass, drums and vocals will all come together on the same stage as part of The Dustbowl Revival.

The folk roots collective will perform tonight, in Ackerman Grand Ballroom, as a part of the fifth annual Mighty Mic concert. This year’s concert is benefiting the Somaly Mam Foundation, an organization that fights sex trafficking.

Connor Vance, a first-year violin performance student and member of The Dustbowl Revival, which also includes several UCLA alumni, said the band plays a mix of several musical genres such as jazz, bluegrass and swing.

“You can think of us as mixing New Orleans jazz with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes,” Vance said.

Other musical performances at the concert will include sets by headliner Best Coast, which performed at UCLA earlier this year, indie rock band Random Patterns, which has been touring with Best Coast, and UCLA alumnus Cameron Hovsepian.

Vance said he believes this concert presents a great opportunity for bands to perform for a cause.

“(This concert has) bands that really know their stuff, and they’re bringing their full energy to support something that’s … worth supporting,” Vance said. “By playing music here, we can actually make a difference and reach the students in a way that the cause itself might not have otherwise.”

According to Kyla Coates, a fourth-year political science student and co-director of Mighty Mic, one child is sold into sex trafficking approximately every 30 seconds. It is this crisis that will be the target of tonight’s Mighty Mic concert.

Mighty Mic, a UCLA student organization formed five years ago, puts on a concert every year to educate and encourage action about a crisis facing the world. Over the course of the year the organization put on several events to introduce and educate students about the issue of sex trafficking, including a battle of the bands, a movie screening of “Call and Response” and a visual display in Wilson Plaza.

The visual display, which was put up two weeks ago, consisted of a triangle of rope, on which was hung 180 pairs of children’s underwear.

“When people were walking to class, we would say, ‘Approximately by the time you get out of your next lecture and come back here, the amount of underwear you see is the amount of people that will have been sold into sex slavery,’” Coats said.

All of these preparatory events culminate in the spring concert.
In addition to music, Coates said the concert will feature presentations by three guest speakers: Nikki Junker, Dr. Katherine Welch and Jared Greenberg.

Junker, a sex trafficking survivor from San Diego, will speak about her experiences being trafficked as an American. Welch works in Southeast Asia and deals with the health repercussions of sex trafficking and how they are dealt with. Greenberg co-founded the Somaly Mam Foundation in 2007, named for a sex trafficking survivor who has been active in rescue and shelter programs since 1996.

According to Amy Merrill, the program director of the Somaly Mam Foundation’s PROJECT FUTURES Global, the foundation operates on three pillars: the support of victim services, survivor empowerment and the eradication of slavery.

Merrill said she believes the Mighty Mic concert is a great way for students to get involved in the foundation’s cause.

“It seems like a daunting task to take action in this issue, and yet there are little things that can end up having a larger impact,” she said.

Coates went a bit further and said she believes the concert is a perfect example of how music can lend its power to activism.

“Our fundamental belief … is that music and art don’t have to be mutually exclusive with education or with activism,” she said. “In fact, the two sides can really interact, reinforce and strengthen each other.”