Music Downtown Eastside offers an in-depth look at how music-making can promote human rights among the homeless and others living in urban neighborhoods marked by poverty. Author Klisala Harrison critically examines a wide range of local initiatives and shows how they can help vulnerable citizens develop their capabilities but also sometimes unwittingly harm them.

Music Downtown Eastside draws on two decades of research in one of North America's poorest urban areas to illustrate how human rights can be promoted through music. Harrison's examination of how gentrification, grant funding, and community organizations affect the success or failure of human rights-focused musical initiatives offers insights into the complex relationship between culture, poverty, and human rights that have global implications and applicability. The book takes the reader into popular music jams and music therapy sessions offered to the poor in churches, community centers and health organizations. Harrison analyzes the capabilities music-making develops, and musical moments where human rights are respected, promoted, threatened, or violated. The book offers insights on the relationship between music and poverty, a social deprivation that diminishes capabilities and rights. It contributes to the human rights literature by examining critically how human rights can be strengthened in cultural practices and policy.