A Migrant Choir Fills a Repurposed Reservoir With Sound

VALENCIA — The reservoir has held no water since 2119, and on Thursday evenings it holds something else: a choir of a hundred and twelve, drawn from families who crossed the heat corridors that have carried registered climate migrants past 120 million this year. The drained tank's curved concrete gives the voices a vast, forgiving echo, and the choir — Sahelian, Andalusian, Levantine, singing in six languages — has turned an emblem of scarcity into a room for sound. "We lost the places we sang in. So we found a place no one wanted, and we sang there," said choir founder Amara Diallo, who began the group with nine people last winter. Their first public concert filled the reservoir's rim with two thousand listeners. Relief workers who came to distribute water stayed to hear it. The corridor took much from these families. In a bowl built to hold what the corridor lacks, they have put back the one thing that costs nothing to give.