A music project that began with a small group of artists meeting online has grown into a full-length album bringing together women performers from around the world. Flow centres on water and aims to use music and art to connect audiences with the climate crisis beyond what statistics alone can convey.
The collective will take part in COP31 in Turkey this month, appearing at the opening event organised by Global Cultural Action. Flow project manager Nikita Llerena says the idea gained momentum after a UN official was moved by five women singing about water at last year’s climate summit in Brazil.
The album includes Charlotte Church, Nadine Shah and actor Maxine Peake, and is co-produced by Grammy winner Jennifer Decilveo. Its contributors have roots in countries including Bangladesh, Canada, the UK, India and Brazil. Shingai, of the band Noisettes, sings in Shona and draws on her Zimbabwean heritage to address environmental conservation.
Church’s contribution, “My Mother, the Ocean”, begins as a meditative piece about water before shifting into distorted electropop. She describes music as a way to help people connect emotionally with what is happening, including the grief and fear associated with environmental loss.
Flow will also feature in a documentary about women on the frontlines of the climate crisis. One of them is Márcia Mura, an Indigenous teacher from the Brazilian Amazon. She recalls being able to drink from the Madeira River as a child; today, she says, the region has been damaged by severe floods and droughts worsened by dams and pollution.
Mura says Indigenous people, particularly women, need to speak for themselves in projects addressing their communities. She helped establish the Mura Collective, which brings women from different territories together to share resources and protect local waters. “When we protect the river, we protect our lives,” she says.
The album closes with a spoken-word piece written and performed by Peake. It follows a woman who draws on an ancestral connection to water to defend her riverbank from corporate development. Peake hopes the project can help people feel less powerless and encourage gradual action.
Sources: The Guardian Music.