The Power of Musicking
Despite having played an instrument since the age of six – first piano, then guitar, until finally discovering my passion in vocal music – I never considered it any more than a hobby. I recognized that perhaps it meant something when, after a tiresome day or stressful week, all I wanted was to get near a piano and a solitary place to sing. Regardless, I never thought it possible to interconnect my passion for music with my more academic studies: political science and environmental studies. Last fall, however, I was fortunate enough to discover something called “ecomusicology”. Simply put, Ecomusicology examines how music both reflects and affects our relationship with nature in political, individual, and spiritual spheres. It expands into areas of non-human animals, and even plants, and their relationships with or reliance upon sound. What enthuses me, though, is the intersection between music and politics, particularly environmental politics and environmental justice.
The first weekend of October, I traveled to Asheville, North Carolina to attend a conference titled “Ecomusics & Ecomusicologies: Dialogues”. Topics discussed ranged from indigenous groups’ use of sound for healing, music in response to mountaintop coal removal in Appalachia (of which there is a LOT, and which I will touch on in a bit), and affects of sound on self-awareness and being – among many others. The creative arts are a necessary tool to bring out our true “humanness,” as one presenter put it. As an environmentalist, I have to wonder why music and the arts are left out of our usual discussion of sustainability. How can we sustain the human population if we disregard the histories that progressed us to where we are today? The arts as a whole are representative of cultures, values, beliefs, and concerns of any given time throughout our human history. Thus, in the quest to answer “What is it we wish to sustain?” I feel we should also be thinking about what we are proud of as a species. Perhaps I am biased, but I would think the arts are something almost all of us can say we are thankful for.
As environmental activist Tim DeChristopher said, “We will be a movement when we sing like a movement”. I love this quote for the fact that it emphasizes the simple power of song in forming a sense of community, one that is going to be essential for our species to thrive in the near and distant future. Music is not just a thing produced, but an action we engage with, sometimes called “musicking”. The act of musicking is social and political in that it establishes a set of relationships between all involved. This perception of music is essential to the understanding of music as protest. When I traveled up to New York City in September for the People’s Climate March, I was fortunate to happen upon a small group of people (amidst the 400,000 there) singing “If I Had A Hammer” as they marched. As a child, “If I Had A Hammer” was a song I listened to during car rides down from Ohio to South Carolina, a song on a Peter, Paul, and Mary album that my father insisted on overplaying. Now I understand that particular song’s significance in countless social movements across America. This enhanced depth of understanding is of not only songs but also social activism in general, and I am thrilled to apply it in my own life, political engagement, and my overall understandings of sustainability and the human species.
-Abby Tennenbaum
