Marking 21 years since Hurricane Katrina
Ahead of Byron Wallen’s ‘Hurricane Bells’ & ‘When the Levees Broke’, discover more about the artists, the music, and how their responses to the environmental disaster were created.
21 August 2026 marks 21 years since Hurricane Katrina hit south-eastern United States, with catastrophic consequences that carried major social and political impacts.
On Saturday 17 October, we commemorate this event and its aftermath through film, discussion and music. 20 years since Spike Lee released his moving four-part documentary ‘When the Levees Broke’, the evening begins with a screening of Act 1, followed by a discussion with Dr Eleonora Sammartino from the University of Southampton’s Film Studies Department. To finish, one of the UK’s most creative trumpeters and composers, Byron Wallen, brings us ‘Hurricane Bells’.
Ahead of this very special evening, we take a deep-dive into these elements and find out more about how they were created.
About Spike Lee’s ‘When the Levees Broke’
An incredibly powerful tropical cyclone, Katrina was one of the deadliest and costliest hurricanes in US history, killing over 1,400 people and causing $125 billion in damages. The storm caused devastating flooding in New Orleans due to levee failures, submerging approximately 80% of the city. Thousands of residents were displaced, losing their homes and all their possessions in a matter of moments.
‘When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts’ premiered on 16 August 16, 2006. Director Spike Lee conducted nearly 100 interviews with politicians, journalists, engineers, historians, and residents to capture diverse perspectives on the disaster and its aftermath. Interspersed with news footage and stills of the hurricane and the utter carnage it left in its deadly wake, the film won numerous awards – including three Emmys – and remains one of the director’s most powerful and significant works.
For this evening’s event, we screen Act 1, followed by discussion with Dr Eleanora Sammartino from the University’s Film Studies Department.
Hero image: Byron Wallen © Urszula Tarasiewicz
About Dr Eleonora Sammartino
Dr Eleonora Sammartino writes:
“The history of New Orleans has been inextricably tied to music since before the emergence of jazz and blues in the metropolis. This is a central relationship also in ‘When the Levees Broke’, in which the score composed by Lee’s long-standing collaborator, jazz musician Terence Blanchard, and the melodies rising from the city animate the images and speak of the residents’ resilience in the face of the disaster. The talk will explore this connection in Lee’s documentary and in the films and TV made in the wake of Katrina. As the city was dealing with the aftermath of the hurricane, music in these media tried to make sense of the devastation, negotiating grief and hope at once.”
Dr Eleonora Sammartino is a Teaching Fellow in the Film Studies department at the University of Southampton. Her research explores popular genres in US film and media; music in film and TV; feminisms and contemporary media culture; and stardom and the cultural politics of identity. She is particularly interested in the political value of popular culture and in the relationship between power, neoliberalism, and identity. She has published extensively on the Hollywood musical and gender representation, including articles in the European Journal of American Studies and the collections Musicals at the Margins (Bloomsbury, 2021), Working Women on Screen: Paid Labour and Fourth Wave Feminism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) and Border Masculinities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).
About Byron Wallen’s ‘Hurricane Bells’
“My piece is an exploration of the socio-political economic climate where their sound resonates.” Byron Wallen
Living at the intersection between jazz, contemporary art and politics, this extraordinary composition was created in response to contemporary artist Peter Shenai‘s work of the same name.
Peter cast five bells using analyses of the structure of Hurricane Katrina – each one represented a 3D snapshot of the hurricane across its trajectory. Bell 1 was modelled on Katrina as it was far out in the Gulf of Mexico and Bell 5 modelled on the storm as it began to impact on land. Hung in a line and struck in order, these irregularly shaped, cyclonic bells produced a series of resonances descending in sequence, indicating the growing power of hurricane as it approached New Orleans.
Listen to BBC Radio 4’s ‘Pursuit of Beauty’ featuring Peter Shenai talking about this project
Gong instruments in general have this amazing political and communicative power."
Byron Wallen is one of the UK’s most creative trumpeters and composers. Widely recognised as a seminal figure in world jazz, he travels the world recording, teaching and performing. In 2019, London– based contemporary music outfit Filthy Lucre commissioned Byron to write music for eight8 musicians in response to Peter Shenai’s ‘Hurricane Bells’.
Building on these unique sounds, reminiscent of Chinese bells and gongs, Wallen’s work reflects on the tragedy, taking in the culture of New Orleans and the climate crisis that threatens ever larger storms.
“The reason Hurricane Katrina incurred such a huge loss of life and destruction was not because of the winds, but because of the subsequent flooding, due to insufficient levy infrastructure and the pathetic response of the US federal government.
Gong instruments in general have this amazing political and communicative power: they memorialise, they mark celebrations, they sound alarms, they call communities to gather around important issues. These bells based on the structure of Hurricane Katrina carry a powerful message and set of meanings with them. My piece is an exploration of the socio-political economic climate where their sound resonates.” Byron Wallen
This original work for an eight8-piece band was set to premier in 2020 and was then rescheduled (due to COVID) for Shoreditch’s Rich Mix in February 2022. The iteration coming to Southampton this October is a quintet version.
Book your ticket for Byron Wallen: Hurricane Bells | When the Levees Broke on Saturday 17 October here
