An Immodest Note: Update on Publications

       After a hiatus of about 20 years, Powerhouse for God is available again, in a 2nd edition, with a new Afterword, and in paperback and eBook. Powerhouse was part of a book, recording and film project I undertook in the last century in an effort to document language in religious practice in Appalachia’s northern Blue Ridge. Beginning in the summer of 1976, with the most concentrated ethnographic fieldwork in 1977 and again 1985, I visited a church in Page Co., Virginia, observing the church community at home and in worship, befriending the pastor and his family, and collaborating with them and also with scholars Ken George, Tom Rankin, and Barry Dornfeld in making a documentary recording (1982) and documentary film (1989), all titled Powerhouse for God. The recording, out of print for decades, was re-issued a half-dozen years ago in CD form by Smithsonian Folkways, while the film has been available for viewing on folkstreams.net for many years. The re-publication of the book makes the complete documentary package available once again. It’s available directly from the Press, and also from the usual on-line book outlets. 

       Books, recordings and films aimed primarily at academic audiences don’t usually get much attention in the popular press, but Powerhouse was an exception. Rock music critics Dave Marsh and Greil Marcus somehow noticed the album, even though it was published by a university press, not a commercial record company. They praised it in The Village Voice and Rolling Stone, putting it on their “best albums of the year” list; and this led to interviews on National Public Radio. A half-dozen years later the Powerhouse project somehow came to the attention of a producer for Nightline, who asked me whether he thought the pastor of the church would make a good subject for Ted Koppel, who was looking to film an authentic preacher for The Koppel Report who would act as a counterweight to the televangelists of the day who were being investigated for fraud. I said yes and encouraged them to see for themselves. Not long afterward, in front of a very surprised group of churchmembers, Koppel and his film crew landed their helicopter in a hayfield across from the church, went inside and proceeded to film Brother John for the program on televangelism, eventually using the footage to bookend his special report and as a contrast to the televangelists. This, of course, was nearly 30 years ago; but televangelism and evangelical fundamentalism remain major players in US religion and politics. Brother John died in 2008 and the church is led now by his son, Brother Donnie. I last visited them in 2016, forty years after my original visit.

       A second book is Cultural Sustainabilities, conceived and edited by Tim Cooley, in which several of my colleagues and former students wrote articles in fields such as ethnomusicology, folklore, ecomusicology, and media studies, related in one way or another to the research I’ve done on musical and cultural sustainability. This book was published a couple of months ago by the University of Illinois Press. Tim asked me to write an autobiographical and reflexive foreword, and then in a very generous gesture dedicated the book to me and wrote an introduction in which, among other things, he described the common threads in my ecological approach to understanding expressive culture over what is now a fifty-year period, counting from my earliest publication. This book is available in hardback, paperback, and as an eBook from the University of Illinois Press and also from the usual on-line book websites. 

       A third book, in press now but not to be published for another year, is my Toward a Sound Ecology: New and Selected Essays. A dozen of my published articles from academic and popular journals, some from fairly obscure places, as well as a new essay on my sound ecology project, will appear in this volume. I wrote an autobiographical and reflexive foreword for this volume also, in which I discuss the power of sound as the connective tissue that forms a pattern in my research interests over the years. It is scheduled for publication in 2020 from Indiana University Press.

       In addition, a special Ecologies issue of the journal MUSICultures, edited by Aaron Allen and me, has just been published by the Canadian Society for Traditional Music. The issue is themed on music, sound, and ecologies, and features a dozen articles from scholars and scientists in areas as diverse as soundscape ecology, ethnomusicology, Western art music, and the history of science. When Aaron and I issued our Call for Papers for this issue, we had no idea how much of a response we’d get. Fifty-five scholars and scientists sent us abstract proposals for the issue, and it was not easy for us to winnow them down to the final dozen. We were, also, quite hands-on in editing, which is something I’ve more or less changed my mind about. When I was editor of Ethnomusicology, the journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology, I relied on the specialists who evaluated the articles to suggest improvements to the authors. My more recent editorial work has been far more involved, either because I have more knowledge about the subjects or stronger views, or both. Yet, paradoxically, I seldom enjoy being edited by someone with strong opinions--unless of course they coincide with my own. For this special issue, Aaron wrote an Introduction, and I wrote an Afterword. MUSICultures’ publication policy makes the journal available for the first 3 years after publication only to members of the Canadian Society for Traditional Music; after that period, it is freely available to the public on its website. This protective policy means that it’s not freely available through the electronic portals of college and university libraries, either—which is unusual, for most academic journals are freely available to students, faculty, staff and in some cases, alumni this way. 

       I also have a few articles completed and in press at the moment. One is on ecojustice and a sound ecology, to appear in the Yale Journal of Music and Religion; another is on ethnography in the study of congregational music, to be published by Routledge in an edited book; a third is on a phenomenological approach to animal sound communication, to be published in the Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Ethnomusicology, and a fourth is entitled “A Sound Economy,” from my keynote presentation at the 2015 joint SEM-ICTM forum in Limerick, Ireland, to appear in a book of articles based on that forum. I finished writing these in 2016, 2017, and 2018, but it almost always takes edited academic volumes several years of production before publication unless they are conference proceedings, in which case the conference papers are published quickly and more or less verbatim.

       Two final observations: one, in retirement since 2013 I’ve been able to focus a lot more on research, writing, public lectures, and publication; two, all of the publications I’ve mentioned in this blog entry, with the exception of the Powerhouse film and the special issue of MUSICultures, were written in response to invitations. Before retirement, of course, I spent a great deal of my working hours preparing and teaching classes, advising students, supervising PhD dissertations and directing the PhD program in my university department, and in other administrative and committee work for my universities. Now I don’t do any of that, unless I decide to accept a visiting professorship for a term or two—which I’ve done only once since retirement; and so I have far more time to devote to research and writing. In truth, most of my publications have come as a result of invitations from editors of journals or university presses who became familiar with my research in one way or another. Even the publication of my first book, Early Downhome Blues, was the result of an invitation from the director of the University of Illinois Press, who in 1970 heard me speak up in response to a paper delivered at a conference, and then buttonholed me, asked me if I was working on anything related to my response and said if so, he’d like to see it. Powerhouse for God was solicited by an editor at the University of Texas Press in 1977 after he saw my name announced on a list of fellowship recipients from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and wrote to ask if I had a book in the works. The Powerhouse recording also was an invited publication, from the University of North Carolina Press originally, and then decades after it went out print, another invitation, this time from Folkways. Of course, today’s job and publication situation for graduate students and young professors is different, and that is a different story. 

 

Sustainability and Just Price

    Although un-noticed by national and international news outlets, an event with global implications took place in the state of Maine a few days ago, when the state's Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Fryeburg Water Company’s right to sell some 600,000 gallons of water per day, pumped from the Fryeburg, Maine and vicinity aquifer, through Well Number 1, sourced (according to local knowledge) by the so-called Evergreen Spring. This enormous amount of water will be extracted daily, to wind up in bottles of the well-known Poland Spring water, owned by the Swiss corporation, Nestlé. The Fryeburg Water Co., incorporated in the 19th century as a private corporation, sells the water to Nestlé for the same rate that the citizens of Fryeburg and East Conway, New Hampshire, pay for the Fryeburg town tap water that flows through pipes under the streets and roads and into their faucets. Poland Spring bottled water costs the consumer approximately $50 per gallon. It costs Nestlé 1/4 cent per gallon. That is an enormous profit, and does an enormous injustice to the citizens of Fryeburg, not to mention the people all over North America who pay such an exorbitant price for Fryeburg’s tap water when sold in Poland Spring bottles. The story made me want to travel to Fryeburg to sample their tap water and see if I could tell the difference.
    I would not be writing about this unless I saw some relation between this ominous event and the theme of this blog, sustainability of music (and now also sound). Sustainability of a resource, such as music-making communities, or in this case the aquifer, is the issue. Town citizens brought suit against their town’s municipal water corporation because they feared that such a rate of water extraction was unsustainable. Also, of course, many people living in the town and its vicinity are not served by town water—the pipes don’t go that far—but instead draw water from wells on their property; surely, the water table would drop and many wells would go dry, requiring an investment in deeper and deeper wells, some of which might not yield sufficiently or at all. They were joined in their suit by environmental groups, notably Food and Water Watch. The town of Fryeburg, which operates the water company, hired engineers and assured the concerned citizens that not only could the aquifer handle the proposed extraction load, but that the income from the Nestlé company would keep the water rates low for those on town water for the foreseeable future. Besides, the Fryeburg Water Co. retained the right to reduce or suspend the water extraction for Poland Spring during the course of a water shortage or other emergency. How that shortage would be measured and what kind of emergency might occur were left open.
    How can this kind of chicanery occur when water is, or ought to be, a public resource? It bears on the sustainability of any resource, including the habitats necessary for individuals to thrive and communicate by means of sound—and in the case of humans, music. The oceans usually are thought to be commons, something that by its nature is incapable of being “captured” or owned. But inland water is a different story, and disputes over water rights are well known and ongoing. With a public resource, the question is who has the right to allocate and dispense it. Classic political theory suggests that in a democracy, the people would cede to the government the right to ownership and thus the obligation distribute it equitably. It would become res publicae, or “public things,” in the eyes of the law. However, in the United States, government did not intercede over utilities until early in the 20th century. Until then, they were operated by private companies, like the Fryeburg Water Co., for profit. Eventually citizens complained that they were paying these companies too much for essential resources like water, and by the time of World War I most of the utility companies either were owned and operated by municipalities or heavily regulated by them. But in 1978 Congress passed the Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act, which effectively privatized the companies once more—although they remained subject to state regulation. The stated reason was that marketplace competition would keep rates down, and citizens could choose to purchase electricity or water from among competing companies. In practice, this has seldom worked to the consumer’s advantage, either because of a lack of competing companies in their area—particularly water companies—or because one major utility tends to drive out competition from smaller utility companies, and consumers wonder how reliable they will be in the long run. The town of Fryeburg itself purchased the Fryeburg Water Company in 2005. It has a quasi-independent board of trustees, as well as an operating staff to run the Company under the aegis of town government.
    In the case under discussion, concerned Fryeburg town citizens and state and national environmental groups protested the sale to Poland Spring of the water resource. They directed their protest to the state of Maine’s PUC, or Public Utilities Commission, which has regulatory authority here. At least one of the water company board members joined the protest. The members of the PUC are appointed by the governor, however, so their rulings are either politically conservative or progressive depending on the politics of the current governor. Maine Governor Paul LePage is a tea-party conservative, as is the PUC these days, so the odds of getting a ruling opposed to the Fryeburg Water Co. were slim. But, as is typical in government commissions, the appointees are people who have worked in the industry, often in the very same utility companies they are asked to regulate when they join the commission. Because of their ties to the industry they favor the companies over the public when making their regulatory decisions. In the Fryeburg case, two of the commissioners recused themselves because everyone felt they were too close to the utilities. And on the Supreme Court, three judges recused themselves because of conflict of interest. Yet all that meant was that Gov. LePage appointed others—in this case, retired judges—who had no ties to the utilities but who shared the governor’s conservative views. The predictable result went against the citizens and environmental groups, and in favor of the Fryeburg Water Co. and Nestlé.
    When power corrupts, the government does not work in the public interest. When a common public resource such as water, or habitat (and here I am including human habitats for music-making) is at stake, the results are unsustainable and disastrous. A final thought: the enormous difference between the cost of a bottle of Poland Spring water and the price Nestlé pays the Fryeburg Water Co. for it is leading me to the concept of “just price,” which is a curious feature of medieval European economic thought, as expressed by theologian Thomas Aquinas.
   

Thomas Aquinas, by Botticelli

“Just price,” or principles of fairness in economic transactions, is in turn is related to ecojustice and the “sound economy” leg of my current project on a sound ecology. One of the four public lectures I gave as Basler Chair at ETSU in Tennessee was titled “An Economy of Sound,” and in it I spoke about the economic exchanges that followed from sound connections, and the social implications of those exchanges. In thinking about justice and fairness in economic (and other) exchanges, I understand that a moral economy has bearing on my sound ecology project. After laboring through parts of Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica in my required freshman year humanities course many years ago at Amherst College, I never expected I would willingly seek it out again.

Music, Sound, and the Environment: A Symposium

    Here's a heads-up to anyone who's within traveling distance of Johnson City, Tennessee. On Monday, April 4, East Tennessee State University will sponsor a symposium on music, sound, and environment, at the Reece Museum, 363 Stout Drive, on the ETSU campus. Besides myself, ecomusicologists Denise Von Glahn, Mark Pedelty, and Aaron Allen will take part--the same "gang of four" who were responsible for the "Music of Climate Change" events last April, at the University of Minnesota. In addition, I've invited Chad Hamill, an ethnomusicologist who is the head of the Applied Indigenous Studies Program at Northern Arizona University, and Scott McFarland, the biologist who is in charge of the Natural Sounds and Night Skies program at the Great Smoky National Park.
   My intention is to have a six-way conversation, not a series of presentations, on the place of music and sound in the current environmental crisis. The audience will also participate. At a minimum, of course, sound is essential in the environment because it enables communication among human and nonhuman animals (and plants as well, for that matter). Climate change, species migration and extinction, the human and nonhuman adaptations that will be required in the face of environmental change--all these have implications for sound communication, musical communities, aesthetics and sustainability of life on our planet.
   Among the topics we will discuss are the following: ecomusicology and the changing definitions and understandings of music with respect to sound and the environment; the post-humanist decentering of humans in the environment and the implications of the Anthropocene; ecofeminist, deep ecology, traditional ecological knowledge, land ethic perspectives and how these are related to music, sound and the environment. In addition, community, networks, and social structure among human and nonhuman beings; place, space, and gender; environmental philosophy; culture and sustainability; health, balance, and well-being; and sound communities and economies; the politics of noise; listening, hearing, and the body; acoustic ecology and public policy; and sustainable materials in the construction and circulation of musical instruments. This is only a partial list.
  The event is free and open to the public. It will take place between 3 and 5 pm, there will be a break for supper, and then it will conclude from 7-9 pm. Without presentations, and relying on conversation instead, both among the guests and also with the audience, we are taking something of a risk; but we hope that the resulting synergy will make for a more engaged and longer-lasting interchange of information and opinions, as well as action.