✘ The central role of music and musicking for a sustainable future
And: Afrobeats and interconnectedness; Blockchains as platforms; Genres are now irrelevant; Rights clearance in the digital era; Music rights + tech ownership ouroboros
As we’re nearing the end of a year defined by several wars, political upheaval around the globe, and lots of great music, it’s time to ask whether music can do more to help get to a sustainable future. It was a year when several major artists continued to make a point about ‘being green’. From Coldplay’s key principles to create a sustainable tour to Billie Eilish working with Reverb to power her Lollapalooza set with solar-powered energy, there’s a sense that the pop stars of today care about the climate crisis. This is, however, not a new development. Take Pearl Jam, who have been offsetting their tours’ carbon footprint since 2003. Radiohead had Claire Stentiford from Best Foot Forward run an audit of their 2003 and 2006 tours in terms of their ecological footprint and provided potential solutions to reduce it. What we see in the efforts of the likes of Radiohead and Billie Eilish (especially her eco villages) is that it starts to consider the actual role of music itself in tackling climate change. Music brings all these people together to watch their favourite band or artist. It’s the music that binds them in those moments. And it’s the participatory nature of live events that can allow us to go one step further towards a sustainable future.
Feedback loops & participation
So besides all the admirable focus on reducing carbon footprints around music, especially live music, there’s a much a bigger role that music could play to create a sustainable future. First, this is about participation in a broad musical - or sonic - ecology. Soundscape scholar Barry Truax defined what he calls acoustic sustainability as “our ability as a culture to live within a positively functioning soundscape that has long-term viability".” What this tells us is that we live in an environment that is always on when it comes to its acoustic sensibilities. Moreover, we - as humans - can’t close our ears. We can wear noise-cancelling headphones, but we can’t close our ears like we can close our eyes. Just like the sonic environment always impacts us, we also sonically impact the environment around us. It’s like we’re a bunch of jazz improvisers continuously responding to what our environment cues up for us and vice versa.
If we understand this interplay, we can take the step to listen to music as a way for us to make sense of our environment and steer it. Just like it would help if local governments would take into account a local venue’s noise output when building a new residential flat, we should also listen to our soundscape when thinking about our biological environment. We still participate in that, just like we did when we sung and danced during harvest. Culture still has that same connotation. We participate within it, and by making music together, by creating sounds, by providing feedback loops through songs, we can guide that participation towards a more sustainable future. Simply put, making and listening to music helps us become more aware of our environment.
Musicking squared
If you’re not familiar with the concept of ‘musicking’ yet, you’ll love it. Christopher Small coined the term to express how music isn’t a thing, or a noun, but a verb, and a process. That process involves the musician, the listener, and - by extension - the environment they occupy. It moves beyond participation and into something ‘more’ that is defined in this neologism: musicking. In order for music to play its role in creating a sustainable future, we’ll need to think about it as a verb, as a process. Similarly, we need to think about our sustainable future as a verb, something we’re working on together. Music, and musicking, can be a blueprint here.
Musicking is a mode of participation in your direct environment. It allows a mindset that brings engagement and embodied experiences. Think about those eco-villages at Billie Eilish her concerts. Her audiences walk around there, refill their water bottle, sign a petition, and do other small acts. All of those acts, however, are done together, in unison. Almost like singing her songs together, the audience also creates a more sustainable future - together.
A cultural shift
Let’s be positive and say that the world is shifting towards a more sustainable approach to life on our planet. We can’t rely on return to old ways. Earth has changed and we cannot undo that. Instead, we have to create a cultural shift to engage our changed planet towards a sustainable future. We can use music to communicate, to empower, and to create. Through these efforts music can participate in expanding our bio-cultural diversity. Let’s make it happen and harness music to help us move to a more sustainable future.
LINKS
➿ Of Afrobeats, Afro Nation and Ecosystems: An Afro-Nation Case Study On The Value Of Interconnectedness (Mayuyuka Kaunda)
“All these different sectors have their own strengths and weaknesses, but it’s in them forming symbiotic relationships that real value can be derived. For this, the relationship between the cultural sector, policymakers and entrepreneurs must be formalised. Properties like Afro Nation should not be isolated as mere commercial undertakings that generate revenue through art, but be embraced as avenues for social cohesion, tourism attraction and brand-building exercises - the brand of the nation they take place in. This will require leaders (in thought and practice) to get around a table and iron out certain recurring concerns. Of course, this isn’t specific to Afro Nation, but we’ll pick out a couple and address how these problems may seem to affect either the concertgoer, organiser or government separately but may actually highlight issues of common ground.”
✘ Another example of the need for policy to meet music on its own turf and to understand the broader role that music has on our economic and social environments.
⛓️ Blockchains as platforms (Packy McCormick)
“It won’t always be just about money, though. As blockchains’ capabilities expand, performance improves, and drawbacks get figured out, the number of things built on blockchains grows. The more “free” you can make the benefits, the easier the decision becomes.”
✘ A useful take on blockchains and how their role might develop in the next couple of years. Packy sees a future where many of the current drawbacks around blockchains will be solved and more and more products will be onchain.
🤷🏽 Spotify Wrapped 2023: 'Music genres are now irrelevant to fans' (Christian Brooks)
“Bronx drill, ambient lo-fi and gym phonk were some of the fastest growing genres on Spotify in 2023. As these micro-categories become increasingly specific, Sanneh says the concept of genre could cease to exist in the streaming era, but communities will continue to matter.”
✘ We’re now at over 6,000 genres on Spotify and it’s reaching a point where the genre becomes irrelevant. People will still coalesce around music, though, and that is powerful. It might not be centred around genre, but more around what people take away from and experience through a piece of music.
⌨️ Reimagining Rights Clearance for the Digital Era (Emma Griffiths)
“Despite the crucial role of rights clearance and the risks at stake – including whether or not a production can be completed at all – there is a startling lack of technical adoption resulting in costly inefficiencies.”
✘ An excellent look at how technology can help improve sync clearance workflows. And, more importantly, the role that people will play to make that happen.
🐍 Music rights + tech ownership ouroboros (Cherie Hu)
✘ Cherie has updated her magnificent overview of who owns what in music rights and tech. Important updates are Bandcamp and BMI, of course.
MUSIC
Footwork is a genre that runs 160bpm and above. It came into existence because dancers in Chicago’s south side needed it to up their skills and show new moves they wanted to use to win battles. As a genre, it’s shown staying power and DJ Manny has a new record that showcases how innovative footwork still is on the bass continuum.