Ecomusicalities

Ecomusicalities

This course is an introduction to ecologically
oriented music, sound art, and the study of
ecomusicology in the context of the contemporary
environmental crisis. Ecology is conceived broadly
as relational understandings of human and
non-human worlds, including considerations of the
sublime beauty of Nature and the wisdom of
traditional ecological knowledges (TEK), but also
of knowledge produced by pollution, sacrifice
zones, nuclear culture, and states of toxic
sovereignty. What do commitments to environmental
justice and climate movements entail for music
and sound? How do philosophical notions of
sentience and juridical notions of legal rights of
natural entities like rivers and glaciers, affect
the way we listen to and produce sound and music?
What do reconsiderations of the relation of nature
and culture prompted by discourses about the
anthropocene change the foundational ideas of the
production of music and sound?

We will address these questions in theory and
practice, surveying works by artists like Annea
Lockwood, David Dunn, Sun Ra, Jacob Kirkegard,
John and Alice Coltrane, Bill Fontana, Pauline
Oliveros, Hildegard Westerkamp, Marvin Gaye,
Forsensic Architecture, Olafur Eliasson, Suzanne
Kite, the Sparks, Crass, Napalm Death, Savage
Family, Childish Gambino, Esperanza Spalding, Leah
Barclay, Maryanne Amacher, Megan Thee Stallion,
the Weathermakers, Danielle Baquet-Long, Celer,
Raven Chacon, William Basinsiki, Hildur
Gudnadottir, Johann Johannson, John Akomfrah,
James Acord, Roni Horn, Peter Cusack, Lawrence Abu
Hamdan and many others. The second part of the
course will be devoted to generating new works and
methods of ecological music and sound making.