A sound track to ecological crisis: tracing guitars all the way back to the tree

Abstract

Analyses of music and environment are proliferating, yet new conceptions are needed to make sense of growing ecological crisis in the Anthropocene. From an empirical project tracing guitars all the way back to the tree, I argue for deeper conceptual and empirical integration of music into the material and visceral processes that constitute ecological crisis itself. Musicians are not only inspired by environmental concerns for compositional or activist purposes. They are entangled in environmental crisis through material and embodied relations with ecosystems, especially via the musical instruments we depend upon. I foreground three ‘more-than-musical’ themes to make sense of unfurling forces: materiality, corporeality and volatility. Musical instruments are gateway objects that invite contemplation of material and corporal relations. Such relations bind together musicians and non-human others. Material and corporeal relations with increasingly threatened upstream forests, and endangered tree species, are being confronted and reconfigured. In the context of ecological crisis, guitars do much more than make pleasing acoustic sounds. Via guitars we co-generate, with non-human others, a sound track of crisis both melancholy and hopeful.

Musical ecologies of grief: breathing and environmental justice in Love Ssega’s “Our World (Fight for Air)”

“…Much scholarship on music and the environment focusses on the pollution or degradation of the material, living world with reference to land and water: how popular songs chart the pollution of a Taiwanese river (Guy 2009); Indigenous musical responses to fracking and extractivism (Galloway 2020;Love 2018); the depopulation of forests to produce musical instruments (Gibson 2019). Where, though, is air in this body of work?…”

Ecology, Estrangement and Enchantment in Black Metal’s Dark Haven

“…Ecomusicological discourse has focused on the sustainability of recording media (Devine 2015), and physical instruments (Gibson 2019), or has critically assessed large scale tours or events for their environmental impact while lauding certain artists for raising awareness about ecological issues or encouraging action (Pedelty 2012, 27-35). Except in unusual cases (Lucas 2015), black metal tends not to articulate concerns about sustainability beyond disapproval of the treatment of nature by generalised, unspecified others or by modern society as a whole.…”