BRITISH FORUM FOR ETHNOMUSICOLOGY

Annual One-Day Conference 2011

in association with

The Institute of Musical Research

5th November 2011

LISTENING FOR A CHANGE: ENVIRONMENT, MUSIC, ACTION

click here for photos from the conference

Report by Jennifer Post

The British Forum for Ethnomusicology held their annual One-Day Conference in London on the 5th of November 2011 at the Institute for Musical Research (IMR). Presenters from Europe and North America addressed international themes on ways musicians and their audiences, instrument makers and other members of the music industry, engage with critical issues related to ecology and environmental change. Paper topics ranged from the management of resources used for musical instrument making to ways we engage with changes in the natural world through recordings and live performance, from participation in environmental politics, especially among indigenous peoples, to reports on ways individuals and organizations have been working for change in order to enhance musical production.

Especially well attended, the meeting revealed that there is broad interest in the study of music and the environment. This relatively new branch of ethnomusicology and musicology emerged first in the 1960s with the soundscape studies of R. Murray Schafer. In recent years, with increasing concern about environmental changes occurring around the world, and the impact on opportunities for human populations to continue their cultural practices, ethnomusicologists have been drawn to new methods for their contemporary studies about music and ecology. Their current work is expanding discourses on the subject with the integration of scientific and additional social scientific material, and provides more effective ways to analyze and communicate about, and advocate for, current local and global issues and actions. The meeting, therefore, also offered opportunities for participants to begin a dialogue about making a difference to benefit populations whose musical expressions are today so heavily impacted by ecological change.

In the evening, American clarinetist, naturalist, and philosopher, David Rothenberg, performed an intriguing selection of pieces for conference participants at the School of Oriental and African Studies. His duets with recordings of bird and whale songs demonstrated how he maintains ongoing dialogues with non-human creatures through music.

Call for Papers

‘We spend a great deal of time in ethnomusicology exploring music-making in social and cultural contexts. We have increasingly referenced musical landscapes – of sound – and virtual places for sharing and learning music. We have all but ignored how the products of the land and their relationship to larger ecological issues may be directly connected to musical changes we face today.’ (Jennifer Post, 2009)

For the past two decades, musicologists and ethnomusicologists have been exploring the relationship between music/soundscapes and nature/landscapes, using a range of denotations such as acoustic ecology, green creativity, environmental ethnomusicology and eco-musicology. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from soundscape studies, cultural geography and eco-criticism, amongst other fields, analyses of the music-nature intersection have been generally concerned with interpreting the social complexities of placedness, belonging, identity and migration.

This one-day conference will focus on musical engagements with environmental change more specifically, aiming to explore, critically and creatively, musical forms and processes that shape, or are shaped by, changing landscapes and environmental conditions. In reflecting on the impacts of environmental change on sounds and performance practices, and conversely, on the reimagining of land- or soundscapes through performance, we will also seek to engage with more wide-ranging debates about environmental uncertainties and praxis.

Programme

Registration: 9.00-9:30
Welcome: Angela Impey, SOAS

Session 1: Natural Resource Loss and Musical Instruments
Discussant: Henry Stobart, Royal Holloway

9:30 Jennifer Post
Sharing Rosewood, Smuggling Ivory: The Global And Local Politics of Resource Use and Distribution in Musical Instrument Making

10:00 Kevin Dawe, University of Leeds
The Green Guitar: Ecology and Criticism in the study of Global Lutherie

10:30 Aaron Allen, University of North Carolina, Greensboro & Fellow of the American Academy in Rome
Sounding Sustainable: Stradivari, Nature & Culture

Tea: 11:00-11:30

Session 2: Sounds of Changing Landscapes
Discussant: David Rothenberg, New Jersey Institute of Technology

11:30 Stephanie Bunn, University of St Andrews
Environment, Resonance and Image in Kyrgyz Oral epic

12:00 Noel Lobley, Oxford University
Recording the Sounds of Change in the Central African Republic

12:30 Joe Browning, SOAS
Crane calls and shakuhachi sounds: tracing changing music-environment relations in the piece Tsuru no Sugomori

Lunch - 13:00-14:00

Session 3: Music and Indigenous Environmentalisms
Discussant: Jerome Lewis, University College, London

14:00 Henry Stobart, Royal Holloway
Sound sensitivity and climate politics in Bolivia

14:30 Thomas Hilder, Center for World Music, Stiftung Universität Hildesheim
Musical Performance, Indigeneity and Environment: The Politics of Nature in Arctic Europe

15:00 Sian Sullivan, Birkbeck College
Trance Namibia? Juxtapositions of music, dance and desire in a desert landscape

Tea 15:30

Roundtable: Making a Difference?
Discussant: Jennifer Post

16:00 Catherine Botrill, Julie’s Bicycle & University of Surrey
Carbon Soundings: The Response of the Music Industry to Climate Change.

16:30-17:30 discussion

Jerome Lewis, University College London
Musical change and environmental change in Congo forest: the contrasting impact of industrial extraction and conservation.

Chris Low, Oxford University
Music, land and social change amongst the Kalahari KhoeSan

Peter Cusack, London College of Communication
Sound recording as Environmental Journalism

19:00 Evening Concert with David Rothenberg
SOAS, G2 Auditorium (open to all / free entry)

Philosopher and musician, David Rothenberg, is the author of 'Why Birds Sing', published in many languages and filmed as a feature documentary for the BBC. His most recent book, 'Thousand Mile Song', which focuses on making music with whales, is currently being turned into three separate documentary films. Rothenberg’s music is inspired by the melodies and beats of birds, insects, whales, water, and wind; he blends spontaneous musical inventiveness with a sense of rhythm, exuberance, and the listening to nature. As a clarinetist, Rothenberg has performed and recorded with Jan Bang, Scanner, Glen Velez, Karl Berger, Peter Gabriel, Ray Phiri, and the Karnataka College of Percussion, as well as released nine CDs out under his own name. Rothenberg is Professor of Philosophy and Music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. His new book, 'Survival of the Beautiful', comes out in the UK in spring 2012. www.davidrothenberg.net

The conference took place in Room 274/5, Stewart House, University of London, hosted by the Institute of Musical Research. The conference fee is £25 (£20 BFE members; £15 BFE student members and concessions) including lunch and all refreshments. For detailed advice on how to get to IMR please see here.