About the Book
Sounds, Ecologies, Musics poses exciting challenges and provides fresh opportunities for scholars, scientists, environmental activists, musicians, and listeners to consider music and sound from ecological standpoints.
Authors in Part I examine the natural and built environment and how music and sound are woven into it, how the environment enables music and sound, and how the natural and cultural production of music and sound in turn
impact the environment. In Part II, contributors consider music and sound in relation to ecological knowledges that appear to conflict with, yet may be viewed as complementary to, Western science: traditional
and Indigenous ecological and environmental knowledges. Part III features multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches by scholars, scientists, and practitioners who probe the ecological imaginary regarding the complex ideas and contested keywords that characterize ecomusicology: sound, music, culture, society, environment, and nature.
A common theme across the book is the idea of diverse ecologies. Once confined to the natural sciences, the word "ecology" is
common today in the social sciences, humanities, and arts - yet its diverse uses have become imprecise and confusing. Engaging the conflicting and complementary meanings of "ecology" requires embracing a
both/and approach. Diverse ecologies are illustrated in the methodological, terminological, and topical variety of the chapters as well as the contributors' choice of sources and their disciplinary backgrounds.
In times of mounting human and planetary crises, Sounds, Ecologies, Musics challenges disciplinarity and broadens the interdisciplinary field of ecomusicologies. These theoretical and practical studies expand sonic, scholarly, and political activism from
the diversity-equity-inclusion agenda of social justice to embrace the more diverse and inclusive agenda of ecocentric ecojustice.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1. Diverse Ecologies for Sound and Music Studies Aaron S. Allen and Jeff Todd Titon PART I: Music, Sound, Ecologies, and the Natural Environment Chapter 2. Ecoörganology: Toward the Ecological Study of Musical Instruments Aaron S. Allen Chapter 3. "Like the Growth Rings of a Tree": A Socio-ecological Systems Model of Past and Envisioned Musical Change in Okinawa, Japan James Edwards and Junko Konishi Chapter 4. Bat City Limits: Music in the Human-Animal Borderlands Julianne Graper Chapter 5. Music, Ecology, and Atmosphere: Environmental Feelings and Sociocultural Crisis in Contemporary Finnish Classical Music Juha Torvinen and Susanna Välimäki PART II: Music, Sound, and Traditional/Indigenous Ecological Knowledges Chapter 6. Haiti, Singing for the Land, Sea, and Sky: Cultivating Ecological Metaphysics and Environmental Awareness through Music Rebecca Dirksen Chapter 7. Coyote Made the Rivers: Indigenous Ecology and the Sacred Continuum in the Interior Northwest Chad S. Hamill/%cnaq'ymi Chapter 8. Resilient Sounds: Rakiura Stewart Island, Aotearoa New Zealand Jennifer C. Post Chapter 9. Relational Capacities, Musical Ecologies: Judith Shatin's Ice Becomes Water Denise Von Glahn PART III: Music, Sound, and Ecologies in Interdisciplinary Perspective Chapter 10. Biologists, Musicians, and the Ecology of Variation Robert Labaree Chapter 11. Recomposing the Sound Commons: The Southern Resident Killer Whales of the Salish Sea Mark Pedelty Chapter 12. The Audible Anthropocene: Sustainable Bridging of Arts, Humanities, and Sciences Scholarship through Sound John E. Quinn, Michele Speitz, Omar Carmenates, and Matthew Burtner Chapter 13. "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold": Impacts of Human Conflict on Musispheres Huib Schippers and Gillian Howell Chapter 14. Eco-trope or Eco-tripe?: Music Ecology Today Jeff Todd Titon Index
About the Author :
Aaron S. Allen is Director of the Environment & Sustainability Program and Associate Professor of Musicology at UNC Greensboro. Jeff Todd Titon is Professor of Music, Emeritus, at Brown University, where for many years he led the PhD program in ethnomusicology.
Review :
Sounds, Ecologies, Musics constitutes an important step for ecomusicology outside of music ecocriticism, enlisting cases of transformative critical approaches that aim to cause significant and lasting changes in the field of ecomusicology, and in music studies more generally.
Sounds, Ecologies, Musics plays an important role in this ongoing development of the field, and will no doubt find receptive readers amongst those seeking to understand better how music and sound studies might respond to global and interlinked crises. The volume is particularly well-suited for teaching purposes, given the self-contained and concise nature of each chapter.
Sounds, Ecologies, Musics plays an important role in this ongoing development of the field, and will no doubt find receptive readers amongst those seeking to understand better how music and sound studies might respond to global and interlinked crises. The volume is particularly well-suited for teaching purposes, given the self-contained and concise nature of each chapter. It is also a welcome (though only partial) corrective to the diminished space afforded to environmen-tal justice and decolonial work in earlier ecomu-sicology publications.
Sounds, Ecologies, Musics constitutes an important step for ecomusicology outside of music ecocriticism, enlisting cases of transformative critical approaches that aim to cause significantand lasting changes in the field of ecomusicology, and in music studies more generally.
