The Rooftop Choirs Singing Down the Heat of a Long Autumn

SEATTLE — On a repurposed parking deck in Seattle, forty people are singing because the roof is cool and the company is warm. The rooftop-choir movement — an unfunded, half-accidental thing that spread through cooling-season cities this year — gathers strangers under shade sails in the golden hour to sing whatever someone remembers the words to. Its unofficial convener, retired music teacher Grace Okonjo, started it in June when the heat kept her neighbors indoors and lonely. "The heat isolates people," Okonjo said. "A song is a reason to be on a roof together." Sociologists at Pacific Rim University, tracking the phenomenon loosely, count improvised choirs in dozens of cities and suspect the real draw is neither music nor shade but proximity — the plain relief of other faces after a summer spent hiding from the sun. "We are not good singers," Okonjo said, laughing. "We are just people who missed each other."