Sounds Like Change

Every episode of Sounds Like Change opens with a song chosen in answer to one question: what song most faithfully captures the future you'd love to build, and why? This week's guest picked 'Love Yourz' by J. Cole . He first felt its healing power while he was sectioned for the third time, on a ward where one of the younger nurses used to take him to the local park for an hour a day and let him cho...

Sean Adams chose Jóhann Jóhannsson's 'Fordlandia' as his song of hope, and the reason he gives tells you a lot about where this conversation goes. He'd considered Solange, Feist, even Elliott Smith, then realised most of the songs that felt hopeful to him were actually about breakups or had difficult histories behind them. 'Fordlandia' stopped him in his tracks years ago, when he was mostly into n...

Helena Wadia chose "People's Faces" by Kae Tempest as her song of hope. It's a song about what actually saves us - not stuff, not safety nets of money, but the faces of the people in our lives. It's also a song that keeps evolving: every time Kae performs it, new lines appear, new distinctions are drawn. When Helena first heard it in 2017, the lyric was "oppressor and oppressed." Now it's "oppress...

What happens when a journalist follows their conscience all the way out of the BBC? Karishma Patel spent months covering Gaza as a BBC Middle East specialist. She pitched the story of Hind Rajab, the six-year-old Palestinian girl who called the Red Crescent for help from a car surrounded by her dead family... and yet Karishma was told she was too emotionally attached to the story. She talks about...

Episode 2: What does it mean to try and imagine a future not just after collapse, but while the collapse is still happening? Mohammed Usrof, Palestinian researcher and co-founder of the Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy, talks about energy sovereignty, the case for fossil fuel embargoes, and why art, politics and liberation can never be disentangled. Usrof is an organiser and anti-imperia...

What can we learn from someone who brings the same heart to the fight for equality and justice as they do to the stage? Shareefa Energy talks about burnout, the wave analogy that changed how she thinks about her role in movements, and why joy is liberation. Shareefa Energy is a poet, writer, recording artist, activist and workshop facilitator from Highfields, Leicester. She is the author of Galaxy...

Welcome to Sounds Like Change, the podcast exploring how music shapes who we are, how we heal, and how we change the world. Hosted by social change expert Ariana Alexander-Sefre, this podcast brings together artists, thinkers, and changemakers to explore the deep connection between music, our personal health, culture, and wider social change. Each episode flows from personal stories to collective...