Listening to the Rain, the Wind, and Each Other

When it comes to music, the sounds of Houston are many, varied, and vastly influential. Strands of that legacy formed a brilliant backdrop for Chamber Music America’s National Conference, held for the first time in Houston in February 2025. Yet the conference listened hard to the city in other ways, too. Beginning five months before the gathering, Houston artists and residents began working on “Sounds of Houston: Voices from a Changing Landscape.” The project, created by CMA with support from the Wallace Foundation, was led by Sounds that Carry, a partnership of Renate Rohlfing and Olivia Cosío that develops programming for nonprofit organizations to strengthen communities through arts and creativity.  

Houston is home to some of the most extreme climate disparities in the country, encountering increasingly frequent hurricanes, tornadoes, and severe heat waves. Beyond its well-resourced Houston Arrow section, the city’s primarily working-class communities of color face growing climate threats with unequal and often inadequate protections. “Sounds of Houston,” a creative placemaking and oral history project, documented the personal experiences of Houstonians encountering the effects of climate change, as expressed through creative collaborations. The goal was to better understand and affect our collective attitudes toward environmental awareness and action. The project paired four resident narrators with artist collaborators to interview, record, and amplify stories of Houston communities through sonic memoirs—audio files that combined the voices of the resident narrators, the sounds of their environments, and original music.  

The project looked beyond documentation and artistic expression. “By creating collaborative sonic memoirs,” Rohlfing says, “we aim to uncover how this process shapes perceptions of climate change, and to investigate whether hearing lived experiences through a combination of sound and music can drive meaningful change in attitudes toward climate justice. Can listening inspire action as opposed to just empathy?”  

“If I hear a clap of thunder, I’m already grabbing my keys,” says Tangi Smith at the start of “An Ongoing Fight,” a sonic memoir created in collaboration with Aris Kian Brown. “Every time I hear that rain hit the top of my roof I think, ‘Will I have to go through what I went through in 2002’” she says, in reference to the effects of Tropical Storm Fay. Smith, a lifelong community organizer who is founder and executive director of the nonprofit Texas Federation of the People, tells a story that begins with her experience of Hurricane Alicia, while growing up in the Cuney Homes of Houston’s Third Ward, and extends though her work in the frontlines of community relief efforts in 2024, when Hurricane Beryl left the Sunnyside community without power or much in the way of assistance for eight days, and First Missionary Baptist Church became a sole source of food, housing, and relief from the heat.  

Brown strums a guitar for some sections of this seven-minute soundscape. “I’m not a musician,” Brown, who is currently Houston’s poet laureate, tells me. “This project was a way to utilize my poetic tools to highlight the story of a courageous Houstonian.” The score Brown creates here is chiefly defined by the sounds of rainfall that she recorded near her home; it forms a constant backdrop to Smith’s narrative, just as it does for the lives of Houstonians like her. Brown also used excerpts from news stories about one hurricane after another, each met by the determination of residents and activists working together. Smith talks about being traumatized but also “being strong for my community.” Near the end, she describes her desire for an ongoing dialogue rather than of the waves of news cycles that trail off a few days past each disaster. And she is resolute: “We can get it done.” 

In another sonic memoir, “Time,” the resonant tones of Jalen Baker’s vibraphone frame the testimony of Houstonian Nichole Redus with the earnestness and buoyancy of an organist at a church service. “We need time to be caught up with time,” Redus says—this soundbite gets repeated again and again, accentuating the feeling Redus relates of falling further and further behind in the wake of each storm. “I have never got approved for anything,” she says in another looped interview excerpt. “I never got help.” As Redus questions why some Houston neighborhoods lose power and lack resources whenever weather takes its toll, Baker’s five-note phrases seem to form question marks, underscoring her frustration.  

The effects of climate charge are hard enough for those born and raised in Houston. They pose yet greater challenges for the many who arrive in the city as refugees. Those populations encounter a sense of environment—social and political, as well as physical—that can be difficult to navigate or even threatening. That’s the theme of “We Are the New Americans,” for which bassist and composer Austin Lewellen collaborated with Zed Minale and Belay Andarge, whose work through the Migrants and Refugees Leadership Academy (MARLA) brings leaders of diverse African communities together to learn leadership skills, empowering them to engage in civic activities and advocacy.   

Lewellen had long admired and supported that work. For this sonic memoir, “We met and discussed their work for two hours,” he says, “and I recorded it all. Then I transcribed the conversation and focused on central themes—the challenges for refugees that are not often well expressed, and the lack of support in areas of navigating our legal and benefits systems.” Lewellen then recorded himself, playing basslines that drew their sense of meter from the cadence of the narrators’ speech. He bows long, broad tones as the two describe the slow progression and laborious work of arriving as immigrants and establishing a sense of security and support. As Minale and Andarge, in edited excerpts, describe the process of establishing trust among neighbors and of “training the trainers,” so that their work regenerates throughout their community, Lewellen’s phrases form something like a folk song. As the two speak of “wraparound services” and a brighter future, his notes grow deeper-toned and bolder. Lewellen sees this memoir as expressing a different sense of “building a sustainable environment in which to live, and notes, “There’s a lot to be said about the way that our government response to climate disaster has been neglectful toward certain communities.”   

Another sonic memoir, “The Storms We Work,” pairs pianist Chelsea de Souza with Jaime Alvarado, a roofing contractor who moved to Houston in 2003 and has worked through many a storm season. As the flowing passages de Souza plays grow more animated, Alvarado recalls the experiences of homeowners attempting to repair their homes and to recover damages from insurance companies and other agencies. He wonders how much of their suffering is due to the vagaries of nature and how much is manmade: “Has it been the storms, or is it that the infrastructure wasn’t there?” he asks. With de Souza’s chiming chords as punctuation, Alvarado tells stories of a homeowner wading through waist-high water, and of baseball-sized hail that left scores of animals dead by the side of the road.  Yet he also talks about the feeling of helping to alleviate pain: “I like it that they can relax when we’re done.” He feels a bond with his clients: “They just want to tell their stories. They just want someone to listen.” 

At the CMA Conference, some 40 musicians, presenters, and arts administrators did listen, closely, during a panel devoted to the project. “We didn’t know what to expect,” says Rohlfing, of the presentation. “Some in the room were brought to tears.” Yet beyond raw emotions was a process of data gathering and shifting perceptions. Before and after experiencing the sonic memoirs, those assembled took surveys about their awareness of climate change, their involvement in activism around environmental justice, and the ways in which they learn about these topics. There was a corresponding survey after listening to the project. Similarly, if you click on these sonic memoirs at the CMA website (which can be found at https://chambermusicamerica.org/community-engagement/) the experience is framed by analytical surveys.  

As Rohlfing reports, the surveys reveal a significant increase, based on the experience of listening to these sonic memoirs, in listeners’ commitment to take action regarding climate change, as well as in their understanding of the link between migration and climate change and their appreciation of how climate change affects their own communities. Pre- and post-listening surveys demonstrate that listeners were moved especially by the combination of voices and sounds, and that they were inspired to consider “personal stories” as of increased significance alongside scientific data, news reports, and government policies in understanding the effects of climate change.  

Rohlfing says that this project “humanizes the abstract concept of climate change, making it tangible and immediate.” As a gentle patter of rain grows louder and more threatening in “An Ongoing Fight,” as Tangi Smith talks with increasing force about the trauma of being forced from her home again and again with each coming storm, that point resonates directly, the way art always does.