Environmentalism in music

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The 2007 Live Earth concert at Wembley Stadium
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Environment in

ecological activism.[1][2]

Environmental

modern classical
.

Some musical artists have used their platform to promote and raise money for environmental causes. Efforts have also been made to improve the

live music
.

History in popular music

Early examples

Some of the earliest songs to cover environmental topics originate from the 19th century, with one example being "

Woodman! Spare that Tree!" by George Pope Morris and Henry Russell.[3] Folk music explored environmental topics throughout the 1930s and 1940s.[3]

Icelandic music has had a long tradition of prominently featuring nature since the country's independence in 1944.[4][5][6]

1960s-1970s

Further information: Counterculture of the 1960s

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's God Bless the Grass (1966) has been described as the first environmentalist album.

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

Send it On recorded by Disney singers Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, the Jonas Brothers and Selena Gomez was produced, and the profits were donated to environmental charity organizations.[citation needed
]

2010s-2020s

Further information:
Climate change in music
The climate movement influenced an increase in climate change-related music during the 2010s.

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]

Earth" featured numerous celebrities and attracted considerable social media attention.[25]

Taiwan's Sheng-Xiang Band (

Taiwan's petrochemical pollution.[27]

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

global warming.[39] An example of his music is the piece The Place Where You Go to Listen. This work involves a sound and light installation that is "controlled by natural events occurring in real time."[40]

Folk music

The North American Dust Bowl was a topic of some folk music of the 1930s and 1940s.

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 "

pollution in rivers. Malvina Reynolds released music on topics such as water conservation, the impact of the California freeway system and pollution.[3] Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, John Denver and John Prine were all prominent advocates of environmental causes in their music and activism during the 1970s.[3]

Hip-Hop and R&B

In the 1970s, along with grievances over the

What's Going On wherein he criticizes the role of the United States in the Vietnam War, as well as the social and environmental degradation of inner city residences, particularly in "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)".[41]

The birth of

Mos Def in his song "New World Water", released in 1999, use the medium to break down the struggles in urban areas for some neighbourhoods to have access to clean water.[42]

Groups like the

environmental injustice from academia and into oral performance historically better promotes shared experiences and shared interest.[citation needed] Malik Yusef and Lennox Yearwood have been involved in the People's Climate Movement, and have attempted to raise awareness of Hurricane Katrina and air pollution being environmental issues affecting black people.[44]

Heavy metal

Wolves in the Throne Room, a black metal band who have often explored environmental themes

Heavy metal music has featured environmental themes, thought to be related to the genre's position as a countercultural style.[45][46]

Blackened".[48][24] Australian rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard released a climate change themed thrash metal album Infest the Rats' Nest in 2019.[49]

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

Brazilian metal band Sepultura have released songs discussing environmental issues in Brazil such as deforestation and climate change, and their song "Ambush" is a tribute to murdered environmental activist Chico Mendes.[56][57]

Punk rock

The Day the World Turned Day-Glo", as did The Clash on "London Calling" and the Dead Kennedys on "Cesspools in Eden".[24] In the 1990s, the movement of straight edge hardcore punk was associated with radical environmentalism and veganism, particularly groups like Earth Crisis and Vegan Reich.[58][59] The hardline subculture that promotes biocentrism was spawned from straight edge hardcore punk, influenced by deep ecology.[60]

Advocacy and fundraising

See also: Live Earth

Many artists have partnered with or supported

Drake, Green Day, Guster, Jack Johnson, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, KT Tunstall, Massive Attack,[62] Metallica, Moby, Pearl Jam, Perry Farrell, Phish, Radiohead,[63] The Roots, Sarah Harmer, Sheryl Crow, Thom Yorke, Willie Nelson, and many others.[64][65]

In 2009,

wildlife rescue operations, including three live albums released by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard.[69]

A rock club in New York City called

better source needed
]

Sustainability

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California. The "TRASHed" initiative with Global Inheritance set out to encourage festivalgoers to recycle waste.[73]
Coldplay's stage for Music of the Spheres World Tour was adapted to require less energy to function.

Given the prevalence of environmental advocacy in music, the environmental impact of various aspects of the

raise awareness of climate change has attracted criticism over their own carbon footprint, particularly the environmental impact of flights taken by artists.[21][74]

Some artists and industry bodies have made efforts to improve their own

Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research to explore hosting low-carbon live events.[78]

offset according to Oxford's principles.[81] The band also pledged to plant a tree for every ticket sold through One Tree Planted.[82]

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

References

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Further reading

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