Singer-songwriter and SongStream Project co-founder Talia Morales performs a song at The Landscape of Lullabies event at the City Heights Library. This particular song is one her mother used to sing to Morales and her brother. | Photo Credit: Michelle Josey
By Famo Musa
Famo Musa is a high school student and member of The AjA Project’s Youth Advisory Council.
The SongStream Project brought a mobile recording studio to City Heights to explore the connections between music and memory, story and song. The project’s mission is to use the interwoven path of music and memory to gather and share stories that build a culture of peace, explore social issues, weave relationships, encourage empathy and curiosity, and act as a catalyst for creativity.
SongStream founders Talia Morales, Vanessa Contopulos and Michael Fryer hosted an event March 29 at the City Heights Library. The event showcased a tapestry of audio and video recordings the group collected from City Heights residents over three months. They recorded their stories and lullabies in a mobile recording studio at the City Heights Farmers Market.
City Heights resident Madina Maho, 21, sings a song to her daughter at the SongStream project booth at the City Heights Farmers Market. The Kenyan lullaby was passed down from Maho’s mother from generation to generation. | Photo Credit: Michelle Josey
From these recordings, a collection of audio portraits was created and shared with the community during the one-day event. Participants were encouraged to reflect on the impact of what they said and heard.
“I believe the spirit of a healthy community is nurtured by the positive relationships we can make,” Morales said. “During our time at the market we witnessed how music brought unlikely people together in a common (art) space, if only for a brief moment.”
SongStream co-founder Fryer added context to the conversation. He said lullabies have been used for soothing and rocking babies to sleep for centuries. He also spoke about how people from all over the world who now call Southern California their home have brought their lullabies with them, creating a special “landscape.”
Vanessa Contopulos and Michael Fryer, co-founders of the SongStream Project, perform an original song at the The Landscape of Lullabies event at the City Heights Library on March 29, 2014. | Photo Credit: Binti Musa
The group founded SongStream in the summer of 2012. Over the past two years, the team created two audio documentaries, one looking at the role of music in the lives of four young adults on the autism spectrum, and the other exploring resilience in the context of music and mental health.
Since January of this year, the SongStream team has focused on developing its latest series, “The Landscape of Lullabies,” which uses the universal lens of lullabies to explore themes of family, home and values.
Morales said the project has had a positive effect on the City Heights community.
“I think The SongStream Project offered a space for the community to come together in the spirit of play and music,” Morales said. “I personally appreciated this opportunity for broadening my social experience and making more diverse connections. And based on my observations, I can also assume that this may be true for many other community members who crossed paths in the SongStream space.”
“Music is my lifeline,” Morales added. “I am a music therapist, I have been blessed to also witness the transformative and healing power of music in people’s lives and have spent the past few years researching how the arts, and music in particular, can play a unique role for positive social change.”
City Heights residents attend the The Landscape of Lullabies event at the City Heights Library to hear the stories behind the participants’ lullabies and to share their own personal stories. | Photo Credit: Binti Musa
The SongStream Project has status as a nonprofit through the Creative Activists Program, a worldwide group of artists that use creativity to advocate for social change. The group is run by the Creative Visions Foundation.
“As part of our greater peace building vision, SongStream believes in the importance of creating spaces where a multiplicity of voices and, in particular, underrepresented voices can have an opportunity to be heard,” Morales said. “I find that the personal becomes the collective and the collective becomes personal. As far as the greater impact, it is challenging to identify the lasting ripple effect that a brief moment shared via song or story can have.”