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Yellow warbler. Photo by Jeff Titon, 2010.
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I begin with a bit of news: FeedSpot has selected Sustainable Music as one of the fifteen best musicology blogs and websites. I appreciate their recognition of this blog, maintained since 2008.
What follows now is a short introduction, for high school and first-year college students, to the topic of music, sound and nature. I wonder if ChatGPT would produce anything similar. I plan to find out. In any case, I wrote this essay in 2019 and have just now imported it into this blog, but I can't seem to overcome the strange formatting triggered by the endnote numbers in the text. So be it, and my sincere apologies for any difficulties in reading.
EARTH SONG: MUSIC AND THE ENVIRONMENT
All over the globe, and
throughout history, people have recognized deep connections between music,
sound, and nature. The 3rd century B.C.E. Chinese Taoist text, the
Zuangzi, asks “You may have heard the [musical] notes of Man, but have you not
heard those of Earth?”[1] Henry
David Thoreau wrote in his journals of the comforting hum of the “earth song,”
the music made by frogs, crickets, and other animals.[2] This essay links earth song to human-made sounds and music for social change and a
more sustainable future.
Sounds tell us a lot about the environment. The natural landscape and
the built environment surround us with sounds, whether the sounds of thunder,
the whoosh of the wind shaking the trees, the ring of the church bell, the bang
of the drum, the alarm-call snorts of deer, the hum of the refrigerator or the
scream of the police car siren. We wonder why birds sing.[3] What
kind of language is bird song? Is it like human language, or are they just
signaling--“danger!” or “here I am?” Have you ever tried to talk with a bird,
singing back its melody?[4] Living
beings communicate by means of sound. If their acoustic channels (“acoustic
niche” is the technical term) are blocked, they either fail to get their
signals through or they may try another channel. Birds that live near highways
sing higher to avoid being blocked by traffic noise.[5]
We call the characteristic sounds of a place its soundscape. Soundscapes
consist of anthrophony (sounds made by human beings), biophony (sounds of
nonhuman beings), and geophony (sounds of the Earth, such as wind, rain, thunder,
earthquakes, and glaciers). You can imagine how important sounds must have been
in an earlier America.[6] Who has
not heard of the Liberty Bell? The ringing of large bells could be heard over
very long distances. People marked the passing of time with bells ringing in
clock towers; bells called children to school and churchgoers to church. The
chugging of the railroad locomotive, the clicking of the cars on the tracks,
and the scream of the railroad whistle became common sounds in the 19th
century.[7] As the
trains rolled through the countryside, many a farmer out in the fields hoeing
corn or chopping cotton wondered what it would be like to travel and start a
new life in some distant city. Many a “railroad blues” song expresses those
feelings while a harmonica imitates the sound of the train whistle.[8] What might
Rachel Carson have meant when she titled her book about pesticide misuse Silent
Spring?[9]
Soundscapes have interested sound collectors ever since it became
possible to make recordings. In some countries, such as Japan, sound collecting
has been going on for many decades.[10] Moses
Asch, founder of Folkways Records, encouraged collectors of biophonic,
geophonic, and anthrophonic sounds and released them on LPs beginning in the
1950s. You can still hear those Folkways albums featuring the sounds of frogs
and other amphibians, birds, thunderstorms, even rooms filled with typewriters
clicking away (typing pools, as they were called back then).[11] Today’s
international sound collectors get together on the internet to share their
recordings and technical expertise.[12]
Soundscapes inspire composers of music in various ways. 20th-century
musique concrète composers sampled and mixed recorded environmental
sounds into their musical performances. John Cage’s famous 4’ 33” is a
composition in which the musicians do nothing for the four minutes and
thirty-three seconds’ duration of the composition. The only “music” the
audience hears is the soundscape of the room in which the “performance” occurs.
Contemporary sound installations are sited so as to integrate musical
compositions with environmental sounds, indoors and out. Environmental sound
art not only awakens listeners to the soundscape but also to environmental
impacts of noise pollution (as from airplane flyovers in the National Parks) and
habitat change. Some composers have taken down bird songs in musical notation,
and others have incorporated, imitated, or transformed bird song phrases in
their compositions. In Chinese music such as “100 Birds Courting the Phoenix,”
for suona (oboe) and ensemble,
extended passages are a virtual catalog of bird calls and songs imitated by
instruments.[13]
But birdsong played an even more important role in traditional Chinese music. According
to the ancient book of the Chunqiu, in the 3rd millennium B.C.E. the
Yellow Emperor Huangdi sent one of his courtiers, Lin Lun, to the western
mountains to invent music.[14] There
he gathered hollow bamboo and made twelve pipes of “superior and inferior
generation” to match the pitches he heard in the harmonious singing of the fenghuang
birds.[15] In
other words, Chinese mythology tells us that the Chinese musical scale comes
from birdsong. It was also believed that in a new dynasty the Chinese Emperor
would order the fixed-pitch instruments to be recalibrated in order to bring
them back in tune with the universe. It would be hard to find a stronger
connection between music, sound, and the environment.
Nor was the connection between harmony in music and the universe
confined to ancient China. You may have heard about the idea of the music of
the spheres. The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras (c. 570-495 B.C.E.) claimed
that that when the mathematical ratios that described the motions of the stars
and planets were also made to govern musical intervals, they created harmonious
sounds; and that therefore these heavenly bodies must make pleasing music
(although their sounds were beyond human hearing). This idea of a harmonious
universe also was essential to medieval and Renaissance European music
philosophers, and to educators who made the study of music a required part of
the quadrivium, an important part of the medieval curriculum. Today music is
not so central to education, yet most students listen to music on a daily basis
for pleasure and consider it an essential part of their lives.
People deeply concerned about the climate emergency ask what they can do
to help mitigate this environmental crisis. One way is to become involved with
music that raises environmental consciousness, promotes solidarity and
encourages care for the Earth. In addition, emerging fields of study such as ecomusicology
combine ecology with music in new and powerful ways that can combine knowledge
with environmental activism.[16] Raising
environmental consciousness often occurs in the face of habitat loss or
environmental dangers. In 1966 Pete Seeger recorded God Bless the Grass,
the first album of environmental protest songs. Seeger’s “My Dirty Stream,”
about the Hudson River, went on to become a protest rallying cry after his
Clearwater sloop took part in the first Earth Day (1970).[17] In “Big
Yellow Taxi” (1970) Joni Mitchell sang “They paved paradise and they put up a
parking lot,” which immediately became a proverbial expression for the
environmental movement’s opposition to the proliferation of shopping malls and
industrial parks. And in this century, to take one of hundreds of more recent
examples, several musicians have devoted themselves to protecting the US
Northwest Coast bioregion, the old-growth forests and salmon grounds on the
coasts of Washington and British Columbia. Dana Lyons, Idle No More, and The
Raging Grannies are among those musicians whose protest songs target the endangered
Salish Sea environment.[18] The
Hypoxic Punks sing about environmental problems in their home city of
Minneapolis-St. Paul.[19] Wikipedia
lists hundreds of “songs about the environment” by well-known and lesser-known
musicians.[20]
In most communities today it is not hard to find local musician-activists who
sing to raise environmental consciousness, promote solidarity, and encourage
care for the Earth.
Ecomusicology, as the name implies, involves the study of ecology and
music. Ecology is the study of organisms (living beings), their relationships
with each other, and their relationships with the environment. Ecomusicology is
the study of music, sound, culture, nature and the environment in a time of
environmental crisis.[21] Ecomusicology
brings together composers, musicians, environmental activists, ecologists, and
students of music and sound to increase their understanding of the sonic world
and its relations with human and other beings, and the environment.[22] Some
scholars are especially interested in applying literary ecocriticism to music--that is, in studying the ways composers have incorporated nature and
the environment into their ideas about music and their musical compositions
themselves. Other eco-musicologists explore the interface between music, sound
and the environment more directly. One of these research areas concerns sustainability
of natural materials used to make musical instruments.[23] For
hundreds of years the finest violin bows have been made of Pernambuco wood,
while the finest guitar bodies were constructed of Brazilian rosewood. But
these woods currently are endangered, requiring laws to limit their use, and
encouraging luthiers to experiment with alternative construction materials.
Moreover, research into methods of stewardship and conservation should result
in a continued, if limited, supply of traditional materials, while it may be
possible to find favorable conditions to grow them outside of their normal
ranges, especially in response to habitat change induced by global warming.
Other important areas for eco-musicological research involve visiting with and
attempting to understand how various native and indigenous peoples think of the
sonic universe and its relation to living in harmony with the environment.[24] Long
dismissed as superstition, this traditional indigenous knowledge about the
healing powers of sound and music has begun to be valued as a way to think
about adapting to conditions brought about by the climate emergency. Related to
well-being is the research on noise pollution, done by acoustic ecologists on
the effects of noise.[25] Sudden
loud noise produces a “fight or flight” response while continued loud noise, as
near airports, in factories, near quarries, and so on, causes physical and
psychological illness, just as a frequently barking neighbor’s dog can drive
people to distraction. Public environmental policy requires noise limiting
ordinances and other means of noise abatement (acoustic insulation, etc.).
People may think that music streamed over the internet is more
environmentally friendly than previous listening formats such as CDs and
cassettes, which not only required fossil fuel energy to manufacture them but
also, not being recyclable, pile up in landfills. But it takes an enormous
amount of energy to operate the servers that store and stream the music. The
amount of carbon dioxide emissions from the manufacture, distribution and sale
of CDs, vinyl records, and cassettes in the US in 2000 was 157 million
kilograms. In 2016, when the revenue from CD sales was roughly 1/8 what it was
in 2000, and when streaming and mp3 downloads were the vastly preferred
listening formats, the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from internet servers
in the US was 350 million kilograms. In other words, despite the transition
from CDs to the internet, the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from music
listening has nearly doubled. Of course, as electricity comes increasingly from
renewable sources, music’s contribution to global warming may decline. In an
effort to reduce their carbon footprint, many musicians and bands have
introduced more environmentally friendly practices into their music-making and
distribution. On their tours, Dave Matthews Band, Phish, Dead and Company,
Drake, Walk the Moon, and others reduce carbon use by employing solar energy,
distributing reusable water bottles, providing solar charging stations at
concerts, and handing out information about environmental issues, green
products and tech, and so on. REVERB, an organization created to reduce bands’
energy footprints, sponsors a Farm-to-Stage program that works with local
farmers to provide artists and their crews with locally sourced food.[26] In
July, 2019 a group of music industry professionals formed an organization
called Music Declares Emergency, calling for “the music industry to acknowledge
how its practices impact the environment and to commit to taking urgent action”
and to “work toward making our businesses ecologically sustainable and
regenerative.”[27]
As concern about the well-being of the planet and all of its inhabitants
is growing, music and sound make us aware of the plight of our common
inheritance: our seas, our air, our forests, our other habitats. We know that
the earth song has the power to awaken our environmental awareness and
encourage environmental activism. Sound connects beings in the world. In songs
of protest and through experimental compositions, we make audible both the
strength and vulnerability of our environment, while sonic connections enable
our common kinship with it.
[2]
For example, his entry for May 20, 1854: “The steadily increasing sound of
toads and frogs along the river with each successive warmer night is one of the
most important peculiarities of the season. Their prevalence and loudness is in
proportion to the increased temperature of the day. It is the first earth-song,
beginning with the croakers, (the crickets not yet), as if the very meads at
last burst into a meadowy song.” See also the entries for Nov. 11, 1850, May
12, 1857, and January 2, 1858. Thoreau’s journals may be found at https://www.walden.org/collection/journals/.
[3]
See Donald Kroodsma, The Singing Life of Birds (Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, 2007).
[4]
See Alan Powers, Bird Talk (Berkeley, CA: Frog Books, 2003).
[5]
See Bernie Krause, Wild Soundscapes, revised 2nd ed. (Yale
University Press, 2016), and The Great Animal Orchestra (Little, Brown
Back Bay Books, 2013).
[6]
Richard Rath, How Early America Sounded (Cornell University Press,
2005).
[7]
In the “Sounds” chapter of Walden, Henry David Thoreau wrote about the
sounds of the locomotive piercing the natural soundscape in the forest near
Walden Pond. For Thoreau these sounds were signals of the Industrial
Revolution.
[9]
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, fiftieth anniversary edition (Houghton
Mifflin, 2002).
[14] Written
by Lü Buweh in the 3th century B.C.E. The music-making events
themselves were said to have occurred in the 3rd millennium B.C.E.
[15] These
were mythological, immortal creatures, sometimes called the Chinese phoenix,
representing both male and female elements (a yin-yang harmony).
[17] God
Bless the Grass, containing “My Dirty Stream,” Columbia Records CL 2432, reissued
in 1982 as Folkways FW27232 and FSS 37232. The album also contained many songs
composed by Malvina Reynolds, author of “Little Boxes,” a celebrated song about
look-alike housing in suburban developments that mocked middle-class conformity
in 1950s America.
[18]
Mark Pedelty, A Song to Save the Salish Sea (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2016).
[22]
For more information about ecomusicology see Aaron Allen and Kevin Dawe, eds., Current
Directions in Ecomusicology (Routledge, 2016) and the journal Ecomusicology
Review (at https://ecomusicology.info/.
[23]
Aaron Allen, “Fatto Di Fiemme’: Stradivari’s Violins and the Musical Trees of
the Paneveggio,” in Invaluable Trees: Cultures of Nature, 1660-1830, edited
by Laura Auricchio, Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook, and Giulia Pacini, pp. 301-315 (Oxford:
Voltaire Foundation, 2012).
[24]
See, for example, Klisala Harrison, “Aboriginal Music for Well-being in a
Canadian Inner City,” MUSICultures, 36 (2009), pp. 1-22. During the
intensifying environmental crisis of the past fifty years, Euro-American
scholars have increasingly turned to native and indigenous knowledges about the
environment for ways for humans to live in harmony with nature. There is a
large and continually growing literature in this area from anthropologists such
as Philippe Descola, whose In the Society of Nature: a Native Ecology in
Amazonia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) was one of the key
texts in the last century. Descola’s Beyond Nature and Culture (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2013) is recognized as a landmark in 21st
century environmental studies.
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