Ukrainian music is more than just sound for a group of London, Ont. musicians staging a concert at Western University Friday. It's a way for them to fight back against Russian violence and oppression from halfway around the world and raise money at the same time.

Songs for Ukraine is a fundraiser for the London Ukrainian Centre with the performers bringing a personal connection to their music that consists of classical pieces, poems and folksongs rooted in the culture.

"It's been a very powerful tool for me to fight back and resist, especially because these art songs have been covered up and oppressed for hundreds of years," said Mykyta Duvalko, a music performance student at Western who is Ukrainian himself.

"No matter how many times they tried to destroy our culture, destroy our music, we'll continue to sing our pieces, we'll continue to speak Ukrainian, and we will protest and we will thrive and we will overcome," he added.

Russia invaded Ukraine at the end of February, destroying cities and some of the country's infrastructure, while killing and displacing millions of its citizens.

According to the most recent census, 10,000 of the 1.3 million Ukrainians living in Canada call London home.

Olena Bratishko, the concert's pianist and vocal coach, said that music has helped her cope during this war.

"I will say that music right now is like a safety net to me because I can just sit at the piano, play the songs and cry out all my sadness and all the terrible things that are happening to Ukraine," she said. "It's all coming out of me as tears."

"There is a sense of contributing," she added. "This is what I can do here. Unfortunately, you know, I cannot go and fight, but I can do it here. I can bring my kids so that they see the Ukrainian concert, they hear the Ukrainian songs. I can bring the community together."

The group will be singing 24 Ukrainian songs at the Paul Davenport Theatre at Western. Two songs are choir pieces and 22 are solos.

Bratishko explained that the concert wasn't intended to be a concert. It was a studio recital for James Westman's voice students, but when the invasion began, they decided to turn it into a benefit concert featuring a full line-up of Ukrainian music.

"I am very grateful to be in this country where I can perform the songs of my own culture, of my own heritage, right?" said Bratishko. "So, that's a big blessing to have that."