Musical and Sonic Sustainability Online

Abstract

The relationship between music, sound and sustainability is not new, but key ideas and buzzwords are currently surfacing with a renewed and quietly sounded urgency. How might scholars and activists develop ecological and ethical methods to best sustain the continuity of expressive audible traditions, and how might music and sound manage to sustain people? In this review article I examine the relevance of four websites and research blogs that all link practical sustainable projects with online and community engagement: Jeff Todd Titon's 'Sustainable Music' research blog, and the websites for Smithsonian Folkways (SF), the Association for Cultural Equity (ACE) and the London Sound Survey (LSS).The increasing profile and impact of both applied ethnomusicology and the newer field of ecomusicology are expanding the critical discourses linking music and sustainability. Ecomusicology, the intersection of music and ecocriticism, develops at