Environmentalism in music
The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (February 2022) |
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Environmental
Some musical artists have used their platform to promote and raise money for environmental causes. Efforts have also been made to improve the
History in popular music
Early examples
Some of the earliest songs to cover environmental topics originate from the 19th century, with one example being "
1960s-1970s
After a radioactive isotope (Strontium-90) was found in cows milk in 1959, the concern for the environmental effects of the nuclear arms race increased. This sparked songs about the invisibility of environmental effects like radioactive isotopes. In his song "Mack the Bomb", Pete Seeger wrote a comparison between a shark and Strontium-90, explaining that the threat of a shark is at least visible, unlike radioactive isotopes.[7] In 1962, Malvina Reynolds also wrote a song called "What Have They Done to the Rain?", which was inspired by above-ground nuclear testing, and how it was putting Strontium-90 into the air, then into soil through rain, which is how it got into cows and their milk.[8] Songwriter Peter La Farge released As Long as the Grass Shall Grow in 1963, a collection of native American songs discussing environmental destruction.[9]
Pete Seeger released what is considered the first environmentalist album, entitled "God Bless the Grass" in 1966. The 1960s produced a large number of environmental-focused songs, primarily due to the popularization of folk music and the musicians that penned many environmental protest songs, in that genre.[3]
In the 1960s and 1970s, popular music was influenced by the counterculture movement, anti-Vietnam war movement and the civil rights movement.[10] The inaugural Earth Day and founding of Greenpeace,[11] the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill and passing of the National Environmental Policy Act were influential on music in the early 1970s.[12] "Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni Mitchell referenced DDT following Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring, which had brought the dangers of DDT to popular attention.[12] John Denver, a country and folk singer often sang about the wilderness of Colorado with popular songs such as "Rocky Mountain High" and "Take Me Home, Country Roads".[3] The Beach Boys also explored environmental concerns, particularly pollution, in Surf's Up (1971) songs "Don't Go Near the Water"[10] and "A Day in the Life of a Tree".[13][11]
In 1970, environmentalist opposition to nuclear testing in Amchitka prompted a benefit concert in Vancounver organised by popular musicians James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Phil Ochs to raise money for a voyage of activist group Don't Make a Wave Committee on the Phyllis Cormack to oppose the test. This concert and subsequent voyage sparked the foundation of influential environmental group Greenpeace.[11]
The primary view perpetuated by mainstream versions of environmental music from the 1960s onward have foregrounded the idyllic cohabitation of natural landscapes and humankind.[clarification needed] The shorthand being the pastoral mode. However the pastoral mode has been used to perpetuate beliefs of a separate and untouched wilderness, as well as anti urbanism. These beliefs do not reflect critical environmental justice practices, which emphasize multidimensionality and intersectionality in issues relating to human health and environmental degradation.[14] The pastoral mode also excluded experiences of minority groups that are an integral part of pastoral landscapes, as well as face the effects of food and heat deserts, increased pollution, unclean water, and more in urban areas.[15]
1980s-1990s
Popular musicians in the 1980s, including U2, R.E.M., Grateful Dead and George Harrison would continue to support Greenpeace by contributing tracks to compilation albums and appearing at benefit concerts,[11] including notably Greenpeace – The Album.[16] Prince, R.E.M. and Sting also successfully pressured record labels to phase out additional packaging for CDs to reduce their contribution to waste and pollution.[11]
In 1995 singer Michael Jackson came out with the hit "Earth Song" which was about environmental and animal welfare. The production of the music video had an environmental theme, showing images of animal cruelty, deforestation, pollution, poverty, and war. Jackson and the world's people unite in a spiritual chant—"Earth Song"—which summons a force that heals the world. Using special effects, time is reversed so that life returns, war ends, and the forests regrow. The video closes with a request for donations to Jackson's Heal the World Foundation.[17][18] The clip was shown infrequently in the United States.[19]
2000s
In 2007, a massive concert entitled Live Earth was held in several locations around the world simultaneously to raise awareness and provoke action on climate change.[20][21]
In 2009
2010s-2020s
The Gorillaz album Plastic Beach (2010) focused on plastic pollution[22] and Björk's Biophilia was inspired by her interest in nature and environmental concerns.[5]
Taiwan's Sheng-Xiang Band (
2020s–present
Billie Eilish's most recent album featured the song "All Good Girls Go to Hell,"[28] which was meant to bring attention to humans inability to stop climate change. It came out in the aftermath of a series of forest fires which is what the song was mainly targeted at.
The 1975's track "The 1975" is entirely dedicated to climate change activist Greta Thunberg. This track contains lyrics such as "We are right now in the beginning of a climate and ecological crisis" and "now is not the time for speaking politely or focusing on what we can or cannot say. Now is the time to speak clearly."[29] Some of these lyrics were taken directly from Thunberg's speeches or press releases.
By genre
Blues and gospel
In the days of the African slave trade to the United States, the role of the environment was closely tied to spirituality and agricultural labor. Enslaved generations born in Africa passed down beliefs in divinity, superstition, and human connection to the natural world. "Africans believed in the interconnectedness of the human, spiritual, and environmental realms and felt that harm toward or care for one necessarily affected the others."[30] These influences were expressed in the form of Spirituals or Gospel music and generally performed in either "praise houses" or in outdoor communion called "brush arbor meetings" or "bush meetings" [31] This style of music was a way to authentically express the black experience in America, which in many ways meant reflecting on suffering. In reaction to this, references to heaven in gospel refer to it as a natural or pastoral landscape.[32]
The Blues which came out of the south at the beginning of the 1900s spoke on the agrarian and impoverished lifestyles of the African American community. Firmly grounded in the realities of slavery and the systemic discrimination that followed, the Blues exemplified by artists like Roosevelt Charles was a reflection of rural labor and connection to the land.[33] Later versions of the Blues shifted to faster tempos and themes of urban life as communities of colour migrated to cities like Chicago, Detroit, and New York. Some historians denote the dukes as an expression of reliance in the face of a continued struggle against white oppression. Thereby the Blues derived community amongst the minority in shared experience. Geographer Clyde Woods claims that citing artists like Robert Johnson that the Blues as well as Hip-Hop represent sustainability ethics by promoting the ‘co-operative rural and urban land forms’ through communities as sacred outside of their material value.[33]
Modern classical music
While
Folk music
Folk music has had a considerable influence on the environmental movement. Richard Kahn wrote that folk's "populist spirit, tradition of protest rhetoric, and general reliance upon acoustic—and even homespun—instruments, many see folk music as the style that best fits and represents the environmental movement".[3]
The first American environmental folk song is thought to be "
Hip-Hop and R&B
In the 1970s, along with grievances over the
The birth of
Groups like the
Heavy metal
Heavy metal music has featured environmental themes, thought to be related to the genre's position as a countercultural style.[45][46]
Black metal, including its subgenre "eco-metal", has had a long tradition of focusing on nature and radical environmentalism, including groups Wolves in the Throne Room[50] Botanist,[51][52] Agalloch, Panopticon and Immortal.[45]
French metal band Gojira and American deathgrind group Cattle Decapitation have also made environmental issues integral to their music and image, respectively exploring climate change and contemporary extinction on their albums From Mars to Sirius (2005) and The Anthropocene Extinction (2015).[53][54][24]
Heavy metal bands in
Punk rock
Advocacy and fundraising
Many artists have partnered with or supported
In 2009,
A rock club in New York City called
Sustainability
Given the prevalence of environmental advocacy in music, the environmental impact of various aspects of the
Some artists and industry bodies have made efforts to improve their own
The format of music consumption also has an impact on its carbon footprint. On an hourly basis, streaming tends to release 55 grams of CO2, whereas CDs are closer to 165, and vinyl and cassettes reach 2000.[83]
See also
- Music and politics
- Climate change in popular culture
- Ecomusicology
- Folk music
- Live Earth
- Protest song
- Rock for the Rainforest
- Woodstock
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Further reading
- Berger, Bruce (1978). "Science, Environmentalism, and Music". The North American Review, Vol. 263, No. 1 (Spring, 1978), pp. 64–66. University of Northern Iowa (subscription required)
- Ceschi, Matteo (2020), "Note per salvare il Pianeta. Musica e ambiente", VoloLibero Edizioni, ISBN 978-88-32085-16-7
- Devine, Kyle (2019). Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262537780
- Menezes Bastos, Rafael José de (2012). "Musicality and Environmentalism in the Rediscovery of Eldorado:An Anthropology of the Raoni-Sting Encounter" in Bob W. White (ed.) Music and Globalization: Critical Encounters, pp. 75–92 . Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253357128
- Sturgeon, Noël (2009). Environmentalism in Popular Culture: Gender, Race, Sexuality, and the Politics of the Natural. University of Arizona Press. ISBN 0816525811