I first heard Weather: Stand the Storm in February, 2023. I knew from that moment I wanted the World House Choir to perform this extraordinary work as we entered our second decade of singing together in community.
I was attending the national convention of the American Choral Directors Association in Cincinnati. Rollo Dilworth, the composer, introduced the performance explaining his process in setting the poem by Claudia Rankine,
The experience of composing Weather has truly been a transformative experience for me. I hope the music challenges the performers to become better artists; the text will certainly challenge all who hear it to become better citizens in their communities.
The experience of digging into Weather has been transformational for me too. Performing it is a continuation of the work I have been doing for many years. I am always searching for music that amplifies women’s voices and experiences as well as the voices of marginalized and oppressed people. I have wondered how choral music, voices empowered together, can sing a new world into existence. All music is functional; it serves a purpose. Dilworth goes on to say,
May Weather inspire us all to ‘disorder the disorder,’ and to do our part in a shaping a society that is fair and just for not just a few, but for everyone.”
This sounds like the mission of the World House Choir.
I believe that raising our voices together in community empowers change. In the late 1980s in Estonia, 600,000 defiant people rose up and sang in the streets for freedom from Soviet domination. I am also reminded of one of my mentors, Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, who once told me, “singing together in community changes the air we breathe.”
In the 1960s the Freedom Singers raised up a song as police and dogs outside were kept at bay by the strength, the solidarity, and the anchor that music played in protecting the congregation inside. While jailed, young Civil Rights protesters always sang to lift their indomitable spirits.
Are we part of a movement? There are forces that aim to pull us apart, but we can decide together that we must act, we must get proximate, come together right here, right now, for each other, for democracy, for justice, for peace.
In the last section of Weather we sing,
We’re out to repair the future… This time nothing, no one forgotten. We are here for the storm that’s storming because what’s taken matters.
Dr. Catherine Roma
Artistic Director