WATERSHED SOUNDSCAPE (AZ)

Watershed Soundscape

Building Hydro-Local Community Through Music, Art and Watershed Science

Watershed Soundscape is a music + art + landscape collaborative project unfolding through the University of Arizona in partnership with Tohono O'odham Community College, Watershed Management Group, 22 ensembles, and other collaborators and community workshops. Events include concerts at Empire Ranch, Water Management Group's Living Lab, and the Patagonia Opera House.

Dear Body of Water is performing through recorded presence in seeming absence, with accompanying poetic water-harvesting stations and improvisational prompts for audience participation to grow a chorus of care in the desert by naming beloved bodies of waters as a voiced river: a watershed soundscape.

Scrolling photos from performance at Empire Ranch include: media projections by artist Bird Harris; musicians Sara Fraker, Jackie Glazier, Philip Alejo, and Cassandra Bendickson with poet Alison Hawthorne Deming; poetic water-harvesting station with poet Gretchen E. Henderson (also speaking in video).

Watershed Soundscape emerged because "The loss of perennial desert flows after colonial settlement has forever altered the landscape and ecosystems of the Santa Cruz Watershed. As we face the challenges of development, mining, and climate crisis, it is essential to understand our desert rivers and creeks as living waters. The Watershed Soundscape project convenes a dynamic new cohort of university researchers, nonprofits, Indigenous voices, school communities, and creatives. This artist-led initiative creates a multidisciplinary platform to explore drought mitigation and ecological restoration, fusing watershed science with sensory experiences to promote educational outreach grounded in Tucson’s unique sense of place." (from the Watershed Soundscape project: details here).

Concerts include: Historic Empire Ranch in Las Cienegas National Conservation Area near Sonoita, Watershed Management Group's Living Lab in Tucson, and the Patagonia Opera House in Patagonia, AZ.

Thanks to: professors of music Sara Fraker and Jackie Glazier who are co-leading this initiative with many other musicians, artists, poets, curators, scientists, and more caretakers. Thanks to professor of art Carissa DiCindio for helping Gretchen steward the poetic-water harvesting stations at concert sites.

Land Acknowledgement (from the University of Arizona): We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of Indigenous peoples. Today, Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribes, with Tucson being home to the O’odham and the Yaqui. Committed to diversity and inclusion, the University strives to build sustainable relationships with sovereign Native Nations and Indigenous communities through education offerings, partnerships, and community service.  

Maps from Santa Cruz Watershed Collaborative (above) and Cienega Watershed Partnership (below).

Dear Body of Water seeped up from the Sonoran Desert (home of the University of Arizona Poetry Center) near the seasonally dry banks of the Santa Cruz River and has flowed into a number of initiatives around this watershed, with more growing. A sampling flows through WaterWays.

WATERSHED

Las Cienegas—Pantano River/Wash—Rillito River—Santa Cruz River—Gila River—Colorado River—Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California)—Pacific Ocean