Let it Flow: Songs for Rivers
By Jeff Opperman, WWF Global Lead Freshwater Scientist & river songwriter
The album Nothings Gonna Change Our World was released in 1969 to raise funds for WWF in the United Kingdom. The album featured the first release of the Beatles’ song “Across the Universe” (which has the lyric used as the album’s title) along with songs by the Hollies and Bee Gees and Cilla Black’s version of “What the World Needs Now is Love.” The charity album also featured liner notes from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, extolling the need to protect wildlife.
As a child growing up in the 1970s, I would listen to my parents’ copy of the album and read those liner notes and think to myself, “Sure, wildlife is important, but what about freshwater ecosystems?” And at that point I resolved that I would find a way to work in freshwater conservation.
That would be a great story, if true. What’s more true is that some time in my late forties I thought to myself, “What the world needs now…is an album focused on freshwater conservation.”
As far as I know, one did not yet exist. So, I decided to start working on one and began collaborating with Matt Simon, the singer from the band we were in together during high school.
So far, we’ve made five songs, spanning 17 minutes of music about rivers. For those of you who remember vinyl, what we’ve come up with is more of an EP than an LP (with an EP defined as “half-length body of work, featuring between 4–6 tracks with a running time of roughly 15–22 minutes.”)
So, here’s our freshwater EP Let it Flow: songs for rivers. Below is a track-by-track guide including links to the accompanying music videos.
Ok, here’s the actual origin story for this EP. I had worked on a report, Connected and Flowing, about how the renewable revolution — the dramatic drop in cost for wind and solar and rapid improvements in a range of technologies to manage power grids — could reduce the need to dam free-flowing rivers for hydropower. The potential for countries to build low-carbon grids without damming rivers seemed, to me, a crucial point that should be shouted from the hilltops. Yet, even with a beautiful accompanying website (called A Brighter Future) the reality is that reports rarely rise to hilltop-shouting material. At that precise moment, I stumbled across a “musical abstract,” a whimsical and delightful music video featuring Angelo Villagomez playing the ukulele and singing about his report on Marine Protected Areas. And I thought, “Our report — no, all reports — should have a musical abstract.”
This was during the pandemic, and Matt and I had already been working on writing songs, trading tracks back and forth. So, I called him up and said, “If I sent some lyrics, could you write a song about the renewable revolution and the potential for low-carbon grids without damming rivers? Think Schoolhouse Rock or maybe Jack Johnson’s song about recycling.” Matt said sure.
I came up with some words and send them to him. Fifteen minutes later — and this is completely true — a voice memo popped up on my phone of Matt playing guitar and singing almost exactly the song you can listen to here. We recruited my WWF colleague, Shauna Mahajan, who has an absolutely beautiful voice, to sing a verse and then the three of us made a music video. Given we were still in the middle of the isolation of the pandemic, the video depicted a zoom call which opens with me struggling to explain the findings of our Connected and Flowing report to a government official. Sensing the message was not landing, Shauna interjects, “Sorry Mr. Deputy Secretary…I think I have a better way to explain this to you.” At that point, someone from off camera hands me a guitar, percussion fades in and we launch into the song.
And though Brighter Future introduced the phrase “Low Cx3” (for Low Carbon, Low Cost and Low Conflict), it didn’t take off until it was uplifted by melody.
Actually, my foray into “Schoolhouse Rock” for freshwater conservation had started a bit earlier, when I collaborated with my daughter and her friends on a songs and music video called “Swim on Up,” an adaptation of “Sober Up” by AJR with lyrics focused on fish migration and dam removal. The video was entered into the “Eurofishion” song contest, sponsored by the World Fish Migration Foundation (WFMF) to celebrate World Fish Migration Day of 2020. The video finished second (you can see the girls being interviewed at the 1:20:00 mark of this video of the awards ceremony).
Two years later, the WFMF was gearing up for another big splash on World Fish Migration Day and so Matt and I wrote a song, “Swimways,” as a theme song for the day. Shauna and one of my daughter’s friends (a veteran of “Swim on Up”) lent their voices and the music video played at the close of the “Break Free Liveshow.”
(A note of trivia: “Swimways” first appeared as a very short song called “Flyways” to celebrate World Migratory Bird Day. Fish, birds, they all gotta move. And freshwater ecosystems are their highways (or rest stops and fueling stations, in the case of birds)).
At one point, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) set targets for the protection and restoration of “land and seas” — in other words, the CBD overlooked freshwater ecosystems. In 2022, conservation organizations, including WWF, were making a big push to include freshwater ecosystems, or “inland waters,” in the high-level goals. So, Matt and I dusted off an earlier song and changed the lyrics to a plea to “Update the CBD, something is missing from land and seas, time to make the framework whole, add freshwater to the goals.” The music video features my WWF colleagues from all over the world, dancing and singing along to the song. Their enthusiasm and passion shine through and, indeed the next version of the CBD included “inland waters” among the high-level targets. Was it because of the song? Let’s just assume it was.
(This song also has a meandering origin, referenced above. It first came to light as “Birthday in Quarantine” a song that Matt wrote for my 49th birthday in 2020. My son’s 18th birthday was a month later, so I revised the lyrics a bit to reflect the poignancy of turning 18 during a quarantine that was sweeping away all the highlights of a senior year spring (prom, graduation, etc.). Our high school band, Wooden Matter, reunited to record it for this music video.)
Matt and I wrote this song to celebrate the incredible dedication of Mina Guli and the simply staggering physical feat she accomplished — running 200 marathons in one year — to raise awareness of the water crisis and to catalyze commitments from governments and companies to address it. Her “Run Blue” campaign culminated with a final marathon in New York, finishing at the 2023 United Nations Water Conference. The song’s music video ran inside the UN on the opening day of Water Conference (at the 46:00 mark of this livestream).
For “Run Blue,” Matt and I wanted to move beyond the “Schoolhouse Rock” mode of song writing, which leads to lyrics that are intentionally a bit silly and tongue-in-cheek. While “Run Blue” has lyrics that certainly align with Mina’s mission, we wanted it to serve as something more than a theme song for a water campaign and sought to write an anthem about climate change and the water crisis writ large. In other words, we wanted the song to land more in the guts of the audience and less in their heads. We also hired professional musicians and a producer for the song (my guitar solo is the only track that is one of us).
For 365 consecutive days — from October 1, 2022 to September 30, 2023 — I posted one water-themed photo per day, accompanied by stories or links. The project was called Water Year and was inspired by me and my wife becoming “empty nesters” and reflecting back on all the connections that matter: between parents and children, friends and family, and how, in my life, water in all its forms had served as an arena for those connections.
As I sifted through a few decades of photos of rivers — and a lot of my kids in rivers — this image welled up: me standing in a river with my arms out, trying to hold it all back. Those days, our times together. But it just keeps moving past. You can stand still and feel the water embrace you for that moment but then it just keeps flowing by.
So we turned that into the song and music video for Water Year, one that has really resonated with people my age, as we come to grips with how “the years keep flowing by now.”
