2011 Listening for a Change: Environment, Music, Action
‘We spend a great deal of time in ethnomusicology exploring music-making in social and cultural contexts. We have increasingly referenced musical landscapes – of sound – and virtual places for sharing and learning music. We have all but ignored how the products of the land and their relationship to larger ecological issues may be directly connected to musical changes we face today.’ (Jennifer Post, 2009)
The British Forum for Ethnomusicology held a one-day conference on musical engagements with environmental change. Sessions aimed to explore, critically and creatively, musical forms and processes that shape, or are shaped by, changing landscapes and environmental conditions.
Recurring themes included:
• The impacts of environmental degradation and the changing or declining availability of natural resources on musical instrument manufacture, and on related performance practices, cultural activities, and aesthetics;
• The role of music/performance – live, recorded, visualised (e.g. music videos) and virtual – in commenting on, rescuing or re-imagining landscapes;
• The significance of music as oral testimony of environmental knowledge, change management and activism.