Storm Songs & Stories

Houston Arts Alliance’s Folklife + Traditional Arts program and Houston Grand Opera present Storm Songs & Stories, a multimedia open mic featuring stories, spoken word pieces, songs and poems on the subject of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike Wednesday, May 4, 2016 at Rudyard’s British Pub.

Houston and Galveston, like any cities along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the U.S., are always vulnerable to tropical weather. The most frightening of these events is the hurricane, with its fierce winds and massive storm surges that can spell devastation for anything in its path.

Storm Songs & Stories was inspired by the voices of the multitudes of storm survivors. Hurricanes such as Katrina, Rita and Ike in this region—and even earlier, the Great Storm of Galveston in 1900—are all too familiar in this part of the United States. Most Houstonians have a hurricane story, and we invite you to share yours.

The program will be a multimedia open mic format featuring first timers and seasoned vets sharing their stories, spoken word pieces, songs and poems on the subject of these storms. The general public is invited to participate as audience and/or performer.

Open mic format: Solo performances only, five-minute time limit

No cover.

ABOUT STORM SONGS & STORIES

STORM SONGS & STORIES is an outgrowth of two major projects. In 2005, a storytelling project called Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston, led by University of Houston Folklore professor Carl Lindahl and public folklorist Pat Jasper (currently the director of Houston Arts Alliance’s Folklife + Traditional Arts program), trained Houston-based hurricane survivors from these two massive events to conduct interviews with over 400 fellow survivors, giving voice to the experiences of these individuals on their own terms. Most of these narratives now reside in the collections of the Library of Congress.

In May of 2016, Houston Grand Opera presents their world premiere of After the Storm, a story of loss, resilience, and the power of community. The work mines the legacy of the region’s Great Storm of 1900 and Hurricane Ike of 2008. This riveting new chamber opera, rooted in one family’s crisis, was developed through historical research and interviews with residents of Galveston and Houston.

In this light, Houston Arts Alliance’s  Folklife + Traditional Arts program and HGOco came together to create an opportunity, for the larger public to participate and share their own hurricane stories, through the medium of their choosing.