andPOP - Pop Culture With Substance

War Child’s second annual Busking For Change fundraiser will take place on Tuesday, Sept. 29, according to ChartAttack. The Toronto-based event, which is largely run by Chantal Kreviazuk and her husband, Our Lady Peace’s Raine Maida, are hoping to raise $30,000 to build and run a youth centre in Darfur, Sudan’s war-torn region.

The event was inspired by Maida, who spent 12 hours in 2007 busking and raising $22,000 for War Child Canada’s School Rehabilitation and Revitalization project in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Busking For Change will feature some of Canada’s most prominent musical acts and will take place between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on Tuesday. Using major streetcorners and downtown buildings as home, the downtown Toronto area will become alive with the sound of music. The musicians will play in exchange for donations that will go to War Child.

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Canadian super couple Chantal Kreviazuk and Raine Maida welcomed a third son into their family on Saturday.

Perez Hilton reports that the newborn is named Salvador Daniel Maida, born at 4:48 a.m.

“He is healthy and adorable,” Chantal told Hilton. “I’m trying NOT to eat him up! Infants are just miraculous.”

The couple’s first son, Rowan is four, and brother Lucca just turned 3 in June.

The Toronto Transportation Commission’s audition process for buskers must be impossible because Canadian singer Chantal Kreviazuk had to busk outside a subway station yesterday.

Kreviazuk wasn’t busking for money for herself, the singer was doing it as a promotion for Maxwell House Coffee, the National Post reports.

From 8 until 9 a.m., Kreviazuk sang at a piano outside of Eglinton subway station while commuters were given free cups of coffee from the folks at Maxwell House.

In exchange for the free coffee, people were asked to donate their change for Habitat for Humanity.

“We should all do a little bit more, and that’s what all this is about is talking about doing some good, brewing some good, helping people in need, and really extending a hand out and in the case of habitat for humanity we talk about a hand up,” David Hughes, president and CEO of Habitat for Humanity, said to City News.

Perhaps taking a cue from his wife, songstress Chantal Kreviazuk, Our Lady Peace frontman Raine Maida has recorded his first solo album.

Maida’s concept for the record may surprise some OLP fans. “‘The Hunter’s Lullaby’ is a collection of poems put to music,” he described to ChartAttack. “It was written and recorded without the persuasive hand of a major record label.”

All ten tracks were recorded independently in his private studio. Maida says the beatnik-style acoustic songs were influenced by Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, Allen Ginsberg and Saul Williams. The album will also address significant social issues, defined with the help of activists Amy Goodman, Howard Zinn, Jared Paul and David Suzuki.

Kreviazuk plays piano and sings on several tracks.

Maida’s first single is entitled, “Yellow Brick Road.” Look for “The Hunter’s Lullaby” in stores November 13.

A headlining performance by musician Alicia Keys will open the six-day-long International AIDS Conference in Toronto next month.

Blue Man Group, Our Lady Peace, Barenaked Ladies, Amanda Marshall and Chantal Kreviazuk will also perform during the kick-off show, to be held on August 13 at the Rogers Centre. Actor Richard Gere will also make an appearance.

The first portion of the evening is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. with a speech by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. Bill and Melinda Gates, who support a number of HIV/AIDS programs through their charitable foundation, will follow with a keynote address. Then Canadian opera singer Measha Brueggergosman will perform with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

The benefit concert will start at 9 p.m. Proceeds from ticket sales to the event will support various AIDS-related organizations.

“These two events in one evening at the Rogers Centre — the opening with the concert — promise to make this a memorable evening that will bring even greater attention to the AIDS issue here in Canada and around the world,” said Andrew Pringle, board president for the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research, according to the Associated Press.

Other notable guests set to attend the conference include former U.S. president Bill Clinton and UNAIDS special representative Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway.

Tickets are already on-sale through Ticketmaster. Prices range from $30 to $150 each.