What happens when a sociologist and a musician reimagine immigration narratives together? In this episode, acclaimed vocalist and cultural strategist Meklit Hadero joins Stanford sociologist Tomás Jiménez for a powerful conversation on music, migration, and belonging. Hosted by Ellen Oh, the episode explores how artists and researchers are working across disciplines to challenge dominant narratives and build new cultural frameworks. From refugee stories to immigrant soundscapes, this episode reveals the deep role of art in shaping not just identity—but public understanding and social change.
Featured Guest: Meklit Hadero & Tomas Jimenez
Follow Stanford Arts on Instagram and YouTube for more stories and updates.
Credits
Host: Ellen Oh
Creator/Producer/Editor: Taylor Jones
Production support: Edi Dai
Sound Designer and Mix Engineer: Chase Everett
Theme song and Music: Juana Izuzquiza
Executive Producers: Ellen Oh and Anne Shulock
Artwork: Connie Ko.
Special thanks to Deborah Cullinan.
Art & is supported by the Stanford Visiting Artist Fund in honor of Roberta Bowman Denning.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Art &, where we surface what happens artists are woven into the research ecosystem at Stanford.
On today’s episode, a musician and a sociologist discuss how music and migration shape our culture, bring communities together, and inspire collective action.
Tomas Jimenez: The question that I've been asking is are we still a nation of immigrants? Are we a people? The nation is made up of people, it's made up of a territory, it's made up of policies, it's made up of a government. But are we as a people, the people who make up the nation, are we still committed to that idea? Do we still believe in it?
Meklit Hadero: Everybody who's working towards the rights and justice of immigrant peoples, we all take those turns and we can show up for each other through music and give each other a kind of spiritual strength that no one can take away.
This kind of collaboration is what makes Stanford a unique place for artists to do transformative work. Meklit Hadero came to campus as a Visiting Artist through a partnership between the Institute for Diversity in the Arts and the newly created Institute for Advancing Just Societies.
IDA has long centered art as a tool for justice and cultural change. IAJS, led by sociologist Tomás Jiménez and social psychologist Brian Lowery, focuses on research that advances equity and belonging. Together, they hosted Meklit—an acclaimed vocalist and composer whose work bridges migration, memory, and sound.
While at Stanford, she taught a course that invited students to explore those themes through storytelling, music, and creative practice—showing what’s possible when artists are given the space to reshape public narratives.
At Stanford Arts, we believe in creating the conditions for that kind of space. Especially now.
In a time when migration is so often framed in terms of division or threat, Meklit and Tomas’ conversation gives us something different: a vision of music as connection—a way to truly feel our shared humanity.
They explore the ways in which social scientists and artists can and should work together, and how art is always a driver of social movements.
With that, here’s our conversation with Tomás and Meklit.
Meklit Hadero: My name is Meklit Hadero. I am an Ethiopian jazz singer, songwriter, composer, cultural strategist, and the host and co-founder of a project called Movement, which uplifts the songs and stories of immigrant musicians. And I'll stop there because I could go on and on.
Tomas Jimenez: I'm a professor in sociology here at Stanford, and I'm also the founding co-director of the New Institute for Advancing Just Societies and my research and writing and teaching focus on immigration, immigrant integration and all sort of related topics.
Ellen Oh: So I want to zoom out a little bit for a moment. Thinking about the bigger issues at hand here and the specific moment that we're in right now, this feels like a really critical moment and a critical issue because since 2020, we've been seeing such a dramatic shift in public awareness and consciousness about inequality and structural racism, and that we've seen the results of that by the establishment of the Department of African and African-American Studies and the creation of this new institute for advancing just societies. But now we're in a new era and the tides are shifting. So can you both just reflect on this moment and what is driving you personally right now?
Tomas Jimenez: Yeah, I mean, I'll talk about what's driving me personally, both as institute director and then just more generally. But as institute director, and I'm paraphrasing some of my conversations with the other co-director, Brian Lowry, who is a social psychologist here at Stanford at the Graduate School of Business, one of the things that he and I have talked about is that every time that there has been some move for progress, some move for greater equality, some move in this country to force the United States to live up to its founding documents, there has been a pushback. There's always been some effort to retrench. So reconstruction was met with Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, which expanded rights in multiple sectors of society, including access to the kind of social safety net and government was met with a total pullback and a desire to let everyone access the kind of abundance in American society.
And then the so-called George Floyd, post-George Floyd moment, and I say so-called because I feel like that moment was a 400 year old moment, but it was a moment of, as you pointed out on enormous consciousness-raising and the kind of movement to change our institutions, the way we talk about things, the way we think about things. And I think there's reasonable critiques that could be made with some of those efforts, but it is now being met with a really strong pushback and a pushback in a way that suggests that there was never a problem to begin with. I have a problem with that idea. And then just personally, I think a lot of us who care about these issues, who pay attention to them feel kind of under siege right now.
I don't think that's saying anything in particularly enlightening, but every time I feel like I want to cry in my coffee or maybe run here, cry in our latte, I think about all of the people who came before me, and some of those people are in my family. I think about my dad having come to this country when he was four years old, he was undocumented for most of his life as a migrant farm worker. I think about my great grandparents who came across the Atlantic Ocean from Italy to become sold fruit out of a horse-drawn carriage and then worked in a hotel as a chamber. I think about people who I never even met who were in my lineage, who survived famines, genocides, who survived. There are people, and I'm just thinking more generally humanity, who've survived enslavement, who survived all kinds of horrible things just so we could be here.
And so I can't really think about their legacy and what they handed to us and sort of look that legacy in the eye and cry about what's happening now. I feel like I owe it to them, and then we all owe it to the future generation to take their legacy and try and build on it. And some of them never knew what they were risking when they left. They never knew what they were risking when some of them were forced to leave or trying to break the chains of enslavement. They never knew what would come of it, and it's us. And so we owe them something.
Meklit Hadero: That was me snapping. Yeah, thank you for that. That was really beautifully said. And also thank you for putting us on a continuum because I think that's really important. I came to the United States as a refugee when I was just in my youth and grew up in Ethiopian communities, really across the United States. We lived in Washington, DC. Well, here's the list. Washington DC, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, Brooklyn, Jacksonville, Gainesville, Miami, New Haven, Seattle, and San Francisco. So I've lived in a lot of different parts of this country and in a way, gotten to know this country uniquely because of that. From the south to the northeast to the Pacific northwest to the west.
What I have found everywhere that I go is a love for the culture, the cultural innovation, the cultural power blooming from immigrant communities. Beautiful music. Music that is beyond genre, that is about carrying on legacies and knowing that folk music is always in evolution. So my role is to uplift the songs and the stories of immigrant musicians. Because of that love. I've crafted that role for myself. I did this work before this particular moment in history. I will do this work after this particular moment in history. This is a path that's incredibly important to me as part of a legacy. What I'll also say is that I read a statistic that has never, ever, ever left my mind, and it was by a person who is part of the ACL's immigrant rights project, and she said that if you look at the amount of money going annually into narrative for anti-immigrant narrative strategy, it's about $30 million a year.
And if you look at the money that goes into pro-immigrant narrative strategy, it's around $700,000 a year. This narrative tsunami feeds a cultural change in the way that we see immigrants, in the way those stories are told, in the way that then people are treated, which then becomes a policy. And we actually need waves of stories coming from immigrant communities, defined by immigrant communities for themselves, and that can change the culture to tell different stories that have outcomes that actually serve people's health and wellbeing. So I see myself as part of that. I'm just one part of those efforts and that's why I do the work that I do and why it's so important.
Ellen Oh: Wow, thank you. I feel like you just so clearly outlined the power and impact that art has on so many levels, from the personal… wellness, to community building, to larger social, political and cultural change that can create more equity in the nation. So (to Tomas) did you see all that? Bringing Meklit in as a social as a social… Did you recognize it? I understand otherwise you wouldn't be here and working with Meklit, but… In thinking about social sciences and social science research, it is not typical to bring in an artist collaborator. And so I'm curious why you want to do that kind of work… what that looks like?
Tomas: So the institute's main thrust is to support and amplify solutions-focused research that addresses racial and ethnic inequality in the broadest of senses. And there's lots of ways to do that. And when we look just more broadly to the community that we're connected to the community we'd like to be connected to beyond the university, you see people doing that everywhere, including artists.
Social science can describe and prescribe. It doesn't always do a great job of touching the consciousness, touching the heart building and cultivating a sense of imagination. And by imagination I do mean the kind of daydreaming part of it, but also cultivating a sense of possibility. And so those are all places that art excels. So when you think about social movements in the past or any time that we've expanded access to rights, resources, our institutions in this country or anywhere else, there was always a kind of coordinated movement. And artists who were changing people's hearts, changing people's minds, raising people's consciousness. I've read a lot of really good social science in my life, I don't know that I've ever read a piece of social science and been like, I feel like I want to get up right now and go do something.
When I hear Meklit sing, when I go to a play, when I see a dance performance, when I see a piece of art… that makes me want to get up and do something. And that's critical to this. On top of that, artists and art in general helps us imagine what could be. It helps us see possibilities. It holds up a mirror to who we are, but also shows us the way to be different. And I think that's part of what we're trying to cultivate as an institute. And so art is integral to that. I don't think you can do that without art.
Meklit Hadero: And also, I get really into the neuroscience of music and what I love about the neuroscience of music is when a group of people listens to a rhythm, our brainwaves in train, that means sync up with a rhythm. That's not to do with whether you like the music or not. That is a physiological, collective response that is happening to your body. When people sing together, their heart rates sync up, their breath syncs up. So if you've ever wondered what is it that makes 500 separate bubbles at a concert feel like one big bubble, that is this thing that our ancestors knew by singing around a fire, that you make a group through music. Now what you do with that group then becomes a question that has to involve sociology and strategy and organizing, but you don't actually get to those things until you feel the connection across a group of people to be able to be effective, to be able to be in it for the long haul. I like to call it our ancient technology for bringing people together.
And I'm saying this, but it's actually not just peachy keen. Like, militaries use this. People use this whenever they want a group of folks to work together towards a goal. But why wouldn't we be using it to create more harmony, more togetherness, more equality and more sense of the world that we want to see.
Ellen Oh: So I guess on that note, and bringing it back more specifically to the issues that you're working on, how does music affect or how can music affect immigration policy? You touched on it a bit about the power of narrative and bringing people together, but what are you thinking as far as your research and how does music fit into your work?
Tomas Jimenez: So the way that I actually think you'd be hard pressed to say there's a direct connection between you perform something and it's going to change immigration policy. I think it's actually more about changing the way that people think about immigration and its connection to our country. And so if you think about classic notions of assimilation, that's always been that immigrants come here and over generations, across time, they just become more American. And that there's this unchanging notion of what it means to be American. I think on its face that seems pretty ridiculous now with where we stand here in 2025, but our nation's policies ought to reflect and have reflected in the past how we think of ourselves as a nation. For the past 70 years, we have been the self-described nation of immigrants, and I think the culture that defines American society has reflected that.
There are lots of ways where you look at things that we think of as quintessentially American that really bear the heavy imprint of immigration waves that have come here, whether that's our conception of the religious mainstream, which now a lot of people talk about is Judeo-Christian. I'm not saying that that's an all-inclusive religious mainstream, but the Judeo part certainly wasn't there arguably even 60 years ago. And the Christian part was distinctly Protestant, just to suggest there's the imprint of religious change because of immigration. The food we eat, the music, we listen to our sense of humor, and the people who produce the comedy that we've enjoyed our music for sure have all had the imprint of immigration. And we have, that's all kind of scaled up to a larger national self-understanding, which is that we're a nation of immigrants.
And so the question that I've been asking is are we still a nation of immigrants? Are we a people- The nation is made up of people, it's made up of a territory, it's made up of policies, it's made up of a government. But are we as a people, the people who make up the nation, are we still committed to that idea? Do we still believe in it? Our policies right now do not at this very moment, do not reflect at all the idea that we're a nation of immigrants. We've always had a kind of ambivalent relationship with that idea, but I would say that it's become less ambivalent in the last month and four years before that, for sure.
So when I think about the role that music plays and its relationship to immigration policy, it shows us the ways that immigrants have historically influenced our culture, influenced things that we think of as quintessentially American and continue to do so. And I mean, you know, Meklit’s connected to a whole network of immigrant musicians who are doing that again. And so to me, it's a reminder of who we've been and the best part about, well, one of the best parts about, there's a lot of wonderful things that I think and I could talk about, talk about the economic benefits of immigration. I could talk about the benefits to survival of the social safety net and et cetera. But I think one of the best parts about immigration as the way that it kind of continues to culturally enrich us, there are challenges that come with that. We don't like to change. And some of the immigrants force upon us some sense of cultural change or at least to reckon with that. But I actually think that's good for a society.
Meklit Hadero: I think also it is very much about spaces to define the narrative of migration for ourselves rather than have that come out of well-funded think tanks with very specific agendas. And that means bottom up, that means from the people. And that's what we doing here. I think another thing, this is a story that I heard. I was at this wonderful concert called In the Name of Love, which was just a couple of days before this past inauguration, and it was a celebration of MLK. And someone from the stage was talking about the way that when Martin Luther King was feeling down, he would call Aretha Franklin and say, please sing to me so that I can continue please. And she would sing to him so that he could go on when things got dark and tell me that the music cannot be there for the people in the trenches. It can. It's a thing where we all trade feeling strong and feeling vulnerable. Everybody who's working towards the rights and justice of immigrant peoples, we all take those turns and we can show up for each other through music and give each other a kind of spiritual strength that no one can take away.
Ellen Oh: And it is that kind of role that I think is often overlooked and undervalued.
Meklit Hadero: This world is so upside down sometimes. I think to myself, if something is undervalued, that means it's really important. I literally think that all the time.
Ellen Oh: So I'm wondering too, I know there were some personal connections, networks, friends that allowed for this to happen at Stanford, but I think that this interdisciplinary work that we're doing here is pretty unique to Stanford. So what is it about being here specifically that allows for this to happen or what can Stanford offer you that you haven't found in your other partners or connections or work?
Meklit Hadero: Well, first of all, teaching this class, I'm teaching a class. It's called Migration, songwriting and Multi-Platform Storytelling. It's a seminar. I have 14 students and I love it. And I'm bringing in a lot of musicians. And so getting to share my community with the students, support their creative practices... One thing that's been really interesting that I didn't expect is that I have two medical students. I have epidemiology students, I have neuroscience and music students, I have theater students, I have jazz composition and music. I mean, literally, it is so interdisciplinary, which tells me that something about this class is drawing people to be able to make sense of the world of their lives through a creative practice and bring their particular lens to it. And that's what we're doing together, and it's been wonderful.
Tomas Jimenez: You know, to answer your question, what makes it possible? Part of it's our students and just their willingness to reach beyond their disciplinary silos. And then, you know, Stanford brags a lot about being a place that's really interdisciplinary and I think works really hard to create structures that allow people to reach across campus and do work together. But I actually think that more than anything, my experience has been that it's getting the right people in the room or maybe on campus, so obviously just starting in this room here, it's like having you and your willingness to mix it up, and being excited about that. It’s people like Deborah Cullinan, who as Vice President for the arts, just has the ability to look across the campus and make connections and bring people into the room. And she's certainly done that for us as an institute.
I think a lot of it is creating the structures and on this campus that's meant providing research funding for people who just work across disciplines. And there's that kind of work. And then it happens, in some ways, the classroom and to some degree, in centers, but it's also getting the right people together who see the power and the possibility of thinking about the same topic in very different ways.
Ellen Oh: I was just going to wrap by asking Tomas if you have any final words of something that you're looking forward to or something that keeps you hopeful?
Tomas Jimenez: That there's just so many people who have come before us, and there are a lot of people who are come after us, and we owe it a debt of gratitude to the people who came before us. And we owe something that people come after us to do what we can to make the world better for them, just like people did for us. That's what keeps me hopeful. You talked about MLK getting down and having Aretha Franklin sing to him. I mean, how can I think about that and whine about our situation today? No, no. I refuse. I just refuse to give in to hopelessness. I just refuse. I can't do it.
Meklit Hadero: What I'll say about that is that people need to be together. They need to be together in person. And every time I get together with a group of people, it can be one other person, it can be five other people, ten other people, and we talk about who we are, what we need, what we can offer. We sing together. I'm going to feel more hopeful. We're going to laugh, like we are going to laugh, and we're going to remember that our connections make us strong and that nobody can take that away.
That was some of Meklit’s song "Birdsong" from her album Ethio Blue. You can also find and listen to Meklit’s music at her website meklitmusic.com
Credits
From Stanford Arts, this is Art &.
Ellen Oh is our host. The show is produced and edited by me, Taylor Jones.
Edi Dai is our production assistant.
Chase Everett is our sound designer and mixing engineer. Our theme song and music is composed by Juana Everett.
Series artwork is by Connie Ko.
Executive Producers are Anne Shulock and Ellen Oh.
Special thanks to Meklit Hadero, Tomas Jimenez, Brian Lowery, A-lan Holt, the Institute for Diversity in the Arts, Deborah Cullinan, Stanford Vice President for the Arts, and Stanford Live.
Art & is recorded at Bing Concert Hall at Stanford University.
Thanks for tuning into another episode of Art &. Subscribe to Art & wherever you listen for future episodes. And follow Stanford Arts on social media for more updates.