I’d come to watch precisely because no one of Roan’s stature had been slated to play what have been, to date, the American music world’s only major communal performances in response to the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The concert, titled Artists for Aid, featured a 20-artist lineup of if-you-know-you-know types—such as the buzz band Geese and the TikTok-beloved Ravyn Lenae—plus Shawn Mendes, a recovering pop heartthrob who hasn’t had a hit in years. The previous two installments of Artists for Aid, which took place in 2024 in New Jersey and London, had received scant media attention. I wanted to find out why a war that has sparked intense outrage worldwide had inspired relatively low-wattage and under-the-radar efforts in American music—and whether that might be changing.