Sounds Like Change
What if music isn’t just entertainment but a tool for healing and social change? Sounds Like Change, hosted by music and social change expert and organiser Ariana Alexander-Sefre, brings together artists, thinkers, and changemakers to explore the profound role music plays in shaping our mental health, identities, and collective futures. The podcast offers an uplifting lens that sees music as a cultural force with the power to shift how we feel, relate, and act in a society that has left so many of us feeling hopeless. Each episode starts with a song of hope chosen by the guest, then moves from personal stories to wider societal questions, and ultimately toward imagining better futures. Conversations are interwoven with moments of sound and reflection, creating space to feel and process. “Music has always been one of the most powerful tools we have for unity, hope and progress, but we’ve barely scratched the surface of its potential,” says host Ariana Alexander-Sefre. “This podcast is about exploring how music can help us heal, connect more deeply, and imagine new ways forward, both individually and collectively.” The series will feature a diverse range of voices, from well-known musicians and producers to psychologists, activists, and cultural leaders. Together, they explore themes including mental health, creativity, identity, social justice, and the role of artists in shaping culture. This podcast launch comes amid increasing scientific and cultural interest in the relationship between music and wellbeing, as well as a growing movement positioning artists not just as entertainers, but as leaders in social and emotional change. Sounds Like Change is a Drowned in Sound production.
Episodes
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 choose what to listen to. Years later, ...
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 noisy punk and emotional singer-song...
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 "oppressor, complicit, and oppressed." That...
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...
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-imperialist thinker whose work sits at the...
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 Walk, endorsed by the late Benjami...
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 challenges to imagining better futu...
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