Sing Out Strong

What is Sing Out Strong?

Sing Out Strong is a multi-year community-based project where we reach out to individuals in our communities and commission them to write texts on activist themes that resonate with them personally, such as immigration, colonization, essential workers and incarceration.

Learn more about our SOS concerts:

SOS: Remembered Voices

Sing Out Strong: Remembered Voices is a live, virtual concert, featuring ten new songs written with families who lost loved ones to the virus. Premiering on March 11, the performance marks the day two years ago that the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. With the idea of creating a musical memorial to all the lives lost to COVID by focusing on a cross-section of specific stories, WSP located ten families willing to share their memories of their loved ones. The performance marks the fifth installment of White Snake’s popular community song initiative.

SOS: Incarcerated Voices

The pandemic has changed our entire way of life. It has changed the way we work, recreate, eat, learn, teach, interact with friends and family. It has forced us to confront the fact that life is precarious, fragile and precious. It has exposed the great divide in American society, with black and brown people disproportionately succumbing to the virus, as compared to white people. This is even truer for those who are incarcerated en masse and for the long term in our prison systems.

We’ve collected stories from writers experiencing incarceration about their experiences exiled from families, friends and community. We’ve heard about what they do, how they’ve been coping, their hopes, their fears, their families and their despair – anything they’re moved to write about. We come away awed by their essential brilliance as they find new ways of dreaming, of communing, of living, of transcending.

SOS: Incarcerated Voices features ten songs based on the texts we’ve collected set by diverse composers inspired to tell these stories. Through the magic of a new audio plugin, Tutti Remote, invented by Jon Robertson, our audio engineer, the concert features LIVE singing by our two singers and LIVE playing by our cellist and pianist as they perform in the safety of their homes. We can’t wait to share this experience with you.

SOS: Essential Voices

SOS: Essential Voices The pandemic has changed our entire way of life. It has changed the way we work, recreate, eat, learn, teach, interact with friends and family, etc. It has forced us to confront the fact that life is precarious, fragile and precious. It has exposed the great divide in American society, with black and brown people disproportionately succumbing to the virus, as compared to white people.

We collected stories from essential workers about their experiences working on the front lines. We heard from medical personnel, hospital housekeepers, grocery store workers, delivery people, and other essential workers. We heard about what they do, how they’ve been coping, their hopes, their fears, their families, their despair, and anything else they were moved to write about. We then paired those texts who composers who set their words to music. The stories were then presented during SOS: Essential Voices.

Listen to the songs featured on SOS: Essential Voices.
Discover the songwriters selected for SOS: Essential Voices

SOS: Immigrant Voices

SOS: Immigrant Voices composers and writers come from all over the world, reflecting the diversity of America, and Boston in particular. They bring with them the music and stories of Peru, Latvia, India, China, Taiwan, Mexico, Haiti, Brazil, Vietnam, and the Dominican Republic. They come from diverse socio-economic, age, gender, and racial backgrounds. Some have day jobs as teachers, professors, counselors; some are musicians, others are high school students, retirees, cooks, waiters, homemakers, and parents. But all are activists who believe that music and storytelling have the power to change lives.

Sing Out Strong: DeColonized Voices Program Cover — Click on the image to download the program book

SOS; DeColonized Voices

SOS: Decolonized Voices composers and writers come from all over the world, reflecting the diversity of America, and Boston in particular. They bring with them the music and stories of the Nipmuc Tribe of Massachusetts, Cape Verde, Hong Kong, the Dominican Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Vietnam, Haiti, the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, and the multicultural melting pot of heritages in the United States. They come from diverse socio-economic, age, gender, and racial backgrounds. Some are professional musicians, some are high school students. But all are activists who believe that music and storytelling have the power to change lives.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, SOS: DeColonized Voices’ had its virtual world premiere on May 13.

Read the program book for the Virtual world premiere of SOS: DeColonized Voices

Learn more about the writers and composers and read the song lyrics.

Download printable lyrics.