The Rise Up Music Project was founded in late 2018 by Matt Halvorson as a daily music podcast and creative challenge.
In 2019, Rise Up shared a new song (almost) every day — one that had been written and recorded in real-time, often just days or hours before being released, with an intention to reflect the emotional and physical experience of the artist at that time.
Personal storytelling, music, creative exhaustion, exploration-of-identity and an overarching sense of art as activism defined the year, as so many people came together to share their lives through music.
You can find all those songs here (or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and anywhere else you find podcasts):
The Rise Up Music Project continues today as a small-potatoes record label, with the occasional podcast episode and livestream event mixed in here and there.
Click below to learn more about these artists who are part of the Rise Up family, some as major contributors to the 2019 Project, others as artists with albums out on the Rise Up Music Project label.
Artist Submissions
Use the form below to submit music for consideration:
A note from Matt Halvorson, founder:
Dec. 30, 2018
The Rise Up Music Project is comprised of six songwriters who will write, record and share one new song each week in 2019: Cee Goods, Stacy Rene Erenberg, Benjamin Gore, Matt Halvorson, Nic Masangkay and Louie Opatz. And with a new guest songwriter joining us to round out every week, we’ll have brand new music for you at RiseUpMusic.org every day in 2019.
But hopefully it’ll be something more than just a collection of songs in the end. This project is based on a belief in the power of personal storytelling and art to create shared understanding, and I think that’s a form of activism that’s hard to suppress. If we share our art and share ourselves — if in our case we write a song every week about what it’s like to be us that week, about how we’re seeing and experiencing the world, about what’s happening around us or some reflection of how we’re feeling — then through that sharing of ourselves, and that process of creating and reflecting, we’re putting something positive into the world.
Our hope is that you’ll walk with us through 2019, that you’ll take a few minutes now and then to listen and participate in this experiment in activism and art and music. And if you’re so moved, we hope you’ll share something of yourself with us as well.
Tune in for our first new song on January 1, and we’ll go from there.
Thank you for listening, and thank you for doing what you do. We appreciate you, and we hope you enjoy the Rise Up Music Project. We’ll be making it up as we go along. It’s going to be a good year.