Aaron Johnson is a facilitator, public speaker, and touch activist. As co-founder of both Holistic Resistance and Grief to Action, Aaron takes the time to hold the stories of black people around internalized racism and those that are Chronically UnderTouched. Because oppression is a part of American culture, the impact of lineage stories should be held as a map for our collective healing. Aaron reaches for that healing through song, meditation, and earth grounding.

Alyx Somas is a Reindigenization Practitioner enlivening indigenous lineage wisdom to help our people re-member our most true nature – deep beauty and interdependence. 

Trained in cultural movement, group facilitation, and somatic healing, they hold communal spaces and ceremonies, consultations for organizations, and one-on-one sessions in Collective Liberation Practices, Ancestral Reclamation, Decolonial Power and Relationship Structures, Emergent Ritual, and Healing Plácticas. 

They are grateful to continue collaboration within the Cascadia Song Rise Council as a Cultural Vision Steward. Connect with them on IG @CollectivityProject and at their website The Collectivity Project. 

AMANDA WEST is a song catcher/writer, ritualist, community leader, mother and ever-evolving human. In a lifetime devoted to music and healing, she has brought song to the thresholds of birth and death, life rituals, spiritual centers, community gatherings, album recordings, festivals and performances throughout the West Coast and parts of Europe. She understands our world to be full of both collapse and possibility, and is passionate about cultivating resilience and hope during this time of collective re-birthing on planet earth.

Bex Lipps (they/them/she) is a queer & nonbinary artist, song carrier, facilitator, performer, and mental health therapist. A firm believer in the power of art, music, and creativity to foster individual and collective healing, they bring their electric energy and love of authentic, embodied expression to community singing and their own musical artistry. Guided by the wisdom of movements for liberation, Bex delights in holding spaces that honor the vulnerability of our human experience with a reverence for ritual and a healthy dose of humor & playfulness.

Binah is a co-founder of Cascadia Song Rise (along with Kavana Bressen in 2023) and serves as co-creatrix on the 2025 Council. When she’s not busy taking care of busyness such as logisticating and anticipating needs and problems in her organizing, she can be found in the community garden, tending the goats and sheep, making cheese, taking walks and working towards building community resilience in the face of collapse.

Daniel's childhood life was formed in deep relationship with the wild jungles and ocean on the island of Borneo, learning the language and songs and teachings of that land and those waters. That love continues now with life on the island of Kaua'i, learning the language and songs and teachings of this land and these waters. We honor the Earth as Holy, singing together with all Beings. Daniel leads a choir on Kaua'i called Sacred Earth, and is in love with community gathering together to Sing.

elias wolf (they/she/he) is a queer, neurodivergent and white-bodied singer, songwriter, teacher, abolitionist and community-cultivator of English, German and Ashkenazi Jewish descent. A musical change-maker and facilitator, elias has been at the helm of 12 different vocal groups over the past two decades and continues to hold singing spaces with rigor, humor and love. Self-described as "queer song alchemy for the revolution," elias' music infuses lush, dissonant harmonies with re-humanizing lyrics that center our personal and collective liberation.

Grisha Stewart is a neurodivergent queer community weaver, dog trainer, and author who catches easy-to-carry pocket songs to de-program intergenerational trauma and build joyful resilience. She is a co-founder of Stellar Village, a diverse global folk school for belonging. Stellar Village nourishes deep collective healing with transformative mostly-online events that weave community singing, grieving, listening spaces, and relational skills. Grisha developed the kinship tending team and Rest & Rejuvenation Station at Cascadia Song Rise.

http://stellarvillage.com (and pocket songs can be linked to grishastewart.com/songs)

Jason “Many Hats” Cohen is a father, musician, an event producer, organizer land steward, musician, composer and songwriter and sings and plays keys, accordion and percussion with his project Incus.

He is the founder of the ceremonial fire circle gatherings known as Forestdance, and is the Executive Director of the HeARTbeat Collective Inc, an arts and cultural 501(c)(3) organization based in Massachusetts.  Jason’s latest efforts is as the Director for the historic Montague Retreat Center, a gorgeous 34 acre venue whose legacy is inspired by an act of civil disobedience by the members of the community who once lived there.  

www.forestdance.org

www.incus.bandcamp.com

www.heARTbeatCollective.org

Katie loves to lead groups in song. She writes layered part songs to remind us of simple truths. Her song circles are welcoming, heartfelt, moving and fun. She is a graduate of the Ubuntu Network’s Community Choir Leadership Training as well as Lisa Littlebird’s Flight School.

Katie’s songs have traveled to Hawaii, Victoria BC, Denver CO, and Big Sur CA and elsewhere. Katie is also a singer/songwriter, band leader and a mother.

Kjersten (She/They) Beauty Activism! Earth Lover, Eco-Edutainer, Song Carrier, Wasterument Maker, Grief Tender, Ritualist, Mother and Co-Creatrix of Cascadia Song Rise, sharing CommUnity BlesSings song weaving on Kalapuyan land throughout Willamette Valley. Kjersten offers gifts of song as ritual communion with the living world, with an alive sense of wonder and deep appreciation for the beauty and complexity of this time and space we inhabit together.  Their original songs are often multi-layered, with percussive elements and woven harmonies. Kjersten is humbly learning and committed to transformative, regenerative practices of collective liberation, re-membering belonging and reclaiming our interdependence for past, present and future generations

Laurence’s songs are easy to learn; mostly layered, often with several phrases taken from inspiring writings, and sung in a gently challenging rhythmic and melodic interplay.

Folks support each other in holding their particular part, then experience the pleasure of blending with other parts to co-create a tapestry of harmonic beauty, rhythmic interest, and shared meaning that nourishes our souls and restores our vision for living into the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

Osprey (they/them) plays ukulele and writes quirky, authentic lyrics about love, self-exploration, grief, gender, and our relationship with the planet. Their songs have taken flight through the community singing circuit. Osprey’s catchy tunes go deep and stay in your head for days, but it’s all good because they hint at answers that are relevant to now. A blend of queer-folk-pop (with a hint of 90’s R&B), their songs are genuine, heartfelt, and easy to sing along to. See ospreyfliesthenest.com for more info.

Lyrics pulsing with reverence and profound reminders, choruses to sing our hearts out. Raw, vulnerable, real, beautiful, intense and unabashed. Rooted in the heart of Cascadia, these songs of land cry out for intact forests and watersheds, hyphal tips of old memory and new ways of being. Come be moved, lifted, reinspired, and reminded why breathe here now.

Sheniqua Trotman is a Brooklyn-based song facilitator, vocal empowerment coach, and social justice activist. As the founder of Elevated Expression, she creates inclusive spaces for healing, connection, and liberation through communal singing. Rooted in Black musical traditions and activism, her work helps people reclaim their voices as sacred instruments of power, joy, and change. With over a decade of experience, Sheniqua has led song circles, workshops, and healing spaces across the country, using music to foster resilience and collective transformation. You can follow her journey on Instagram at @_elevatedexpression and visit her website at elevatedexpression.net.

Sommer Fawn Moselle (Xamada, Dj*Xa), is a vocalist, music producer, recording artist, DJ, ceremonialist, song holder and sound healer. Xe(shee) holds a MA degree in Somatic Psychology from CIIS with an independent focus on Black & Indigenous epistemologies. S.fm/x is committed to collective liberation through the continual cultivation of beauty, love, compassion, wisdom, peace and understanding for the transformation and benefit of all beings through sound, music, dance and community engagement.

https://www.sonicbids.com/band/xamada/