Composing Aid is unique to the book market for the following reasons: - It humanizes people that have experienced forced migration during a period of increasing xenophobia. - It elucidates the ways forced migrants have drawn on their cultural resources and made claims to rights amidst the debilitating conditions of a long-term refugee camp. - It challenges dominant criteria for evaluating what constitutes a successful musical aid project. - It offers a critical perspective on the benefits, limits, and consequences of arts-based humanitarian interventions. - It offers a provocative rethinking of conventional research methods in ethnomusicology through its focus on activist research.