Gather Your Resilience: An Evening of Community Song and Spirit Elevation *with Ríomas*

Ríomas (RiYo for short, they/them), previously known as Shireen Amini, is a queer, trans masculine, Puerto Rican-Iranian artist, facilitator, and culture builder based in Portland, Oregon. Creating at the intersection of music, healing, and activism, they are guided by a belief that music, especially voice and rhythm, can reawaken in us what modern culture has forgotten: how to grieve, grow, and feel our power together. Ríomas crafts artful, participatory songs that invite realness, tenderness, joy, and transformative energy, drawing from roots, pop and folk textures, respectfully from Black and Afro-Latin lineages. Through their song circles and educational offerings, Ríomas empowers people to trust their musicality and engage music as a living practice for cultural healing and social change. They are the founder of Sing People Sing!, a queer and BIPOC-led community song circle series in Portland, author of the course Drum Song Reclamation, and leader of an emerging band collective bridging high-level musicianship with community participation. Their first community song album Gather Your Resilience: Medicine for Liberation just released in March 2026.

“Gather Your Resilience: Medicine for Liberation” is the first community song album from Ríomas (formerly known as Shireen Amini), an artist whose work has been steadily evolving toward the transformative power of collective singing.
Over the last 7 years, Ríomas stepped into the growing stream of the community singing movement, a culture where songs are created not just to be listened to, but to be sung together. In this world of “layer songs,” simple phrases unfold into powerful musical journeys designed to live in the body, ripple through communities, and travel far beyond their origin.
Many of the songs on this album have already been carried in the voices of communities for years. At first, the idea was simply to record some of Ríomas’ “greatest hits” from the community singing world, songs that alchemically came through for their own healing. But as the project deepened in intention, what it wanted to be more clearly emerged: a collection of songs specifically offering healing and reclaiming of power from generational, systemic harms on our bodies, souls, spirits.
This album is rooted in the belief that liberation must include tending within. The songs move through an emotional and spiritual progression calling in ancestral and communal support, untangling internalized oppression, grieving what has been lost, reclaiming dignity and self-trust, and ultimately turning outward toward shared power and collective action, centered in love. All songs emerged from a very personal place and yet have become so relevant to unwinding us all from webs of dysfunction.
These songs function as medicine: simple but potent affirmations meant to be sung repeatedly until they begin to rewire the nervous system and reshape belief. They are tools for trauma healing and recovery from patterns of abandonment and codependency. And then when sung with others, personal mantras become community declarations.
While the album is meant for anyone, it carries a particular intention to support the liberation of people who have been historically oppressed, especially due to race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexuality. The vision is one of “liberation from the inside out”: undoing oppression within ourselves so that we can develop resilience, clarity, and psychological freedom that no system can easily take away.
Musically, the album bridges the worlds of communal healing and contemporary listening. Rooted in pop, soul, R&B, hip-hop, and Latin influences, the arrangements honor the deep lineages of African and Afro-Latin musical traditions acknowledging the resilience and creativity that emerged amidst the violent histories of slavery and colonization. The uplift of choir voices that emerges throughout also nods to the core context from which these songs first came alive and where they hope to continue on…in community. Across its eight songs, the music moves through tenderness, playfulness, reverence, groove, and power. Some songs hold grief with gentle care. Others pulse with rhythm and defiant joy.
Half the album was recorded live with a band in studio, while the other half was crafted in a home-studio production setting. Ríomas collaborated closely with arranger and vocalist Tracy LJ Robertson, whose visionary ear helped expand the songs from short, looping mantras into rich emotional arcs that build, unfold, and move the body. Together they shaped arrangements that preserve the simplicity of community songs while giving them the depth and momentum of modern production and powerful singer-songwriter journeys.
This project became a true coast-to-coast collaboration, bringing together artists and engineers from Ithaca and Brooklyn, NY to Portland, OR, and featuring a choir gathered through the Gaia Music Collective in NYC.
The album itself was brought to life through community support: more than 300 people contributed to a crowdfunding campaign that raised $25,000 to make the recording possible. Below find a list honoring every contributor with such immense gratitude.
Ultimately, “Gather Your Resilience: Medicine for Liberation” is more than a collection of recordings. It is a commitment to serving life through music, a reaffirmation that music can still serve its oldest purpose: helping people remember who they are, where they come from, to heal what has been broken, and gather the courage to transform the world together.

May these songs meet you in this moment, on your path, to serve your healing. And may that healing ripple.