Storm Songs & Stories
STORM SONGS & STORIES was a public open mic event investigating the many types of oral tradition that circulate around calamitous climate events. It featured stories, spoken word pieces, poems and songs about Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike. Houston and Galveston, like all coastal cities, are subject to the trials of tropical weather. The most frightening of these is the hurricane, with its fierce winds and massive storm surges that can spell devastation for anything in its path. Hurricanes such as Katrina, Rita and Ike— and even earlier, the Great Storm of Galveston in 1900 — are all too familiar along the Gulf Coast and establish the region’s exceptional vulnerability.
STORM SONGS & STORIES was an outgrowth of two major projects—a 2005 survivor storytelling project, titled Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston (SKRH), and Houston Grand Opera’s After the Storm, which premiered in May 2016. The SKRH storytelling project, led by University of Houston Professor Carl Lindahl and Public Folklorist Pat Jasper, entailed Houston-based hurricane survivors interviewing more than 400 fellow survivors. Most of the resulting narratives now reside in the collections of the Library of Congress and the University of Houston.
STORM SONGS & STORIES took that project a step further by featuring first timers and seasoned performers sharing their personal, artful, oral responses on the subject of these storms in prose, poetry and song. The general public was invited to participate as audience and/or performer.
STORM SONGS & STORIES is a public project produced as a part of the Houston Folklife Collection. The work contained in the Houston Folklife Collection was produced by Folklorist Pat Jasper and Project Manager Angel Quesada, with assistance from a range of colleagues and the generous participation of Houstonians and citizens of surrounding communities. The creation of this website was supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts Folk and Traditional Arts Program and University of Houston Special Collections.