Towards an eco-literate tertiary music education: Notes from a South African context

Introduction and keywords

What’s coming is coming, the truth doesn’t care about our misunderstanding of it. This is what’s coming. (Bloom in Gambade & Tyilo, 2019)

After a robust class debate about music and the environment in August 2018, it occurred to me that the students seemed particularly receptive to this topic. ¹ But, this experience also appears to be in stark contrast with a general disregard in South Africa for climate concerns. Roger Southall (2018) summarises as follows: ‘South Africa has . . . developed . . . a culture of not caring about the environment which has been emblematic of the country’s mining industry for more than a century’. Kevin Bloom (2019) reports on a generally unclear and contradictory set of statements about environmental concerns in selected political parties’ manifestos before the national elections in May 2019. Nonetheless, there is not only a significant record of environmental protests in the country (Bond, 2002), but also academic scholarship that demonstrates a serious engagement with these issues (Cock, 2007; Moola, 2001; Satgar, 2018; Swilling, 2020). In South Africa, with its dubious distinction of being one of the world’s most unequal countries (University of the Witwatersrand, & Human Sciences Research Council, 2018, p. 70), the realisation that economically marginalised people are likely to suffer the most from climate change is impossible to ignore (Joubert, 2008, p. 3).

September 2019 was a positive month in terms of raising awareness about climate change. Greta Thunberg’s ‘How dare you’ speech at the United Nations Climate Action Summit occurred within days of global protests on climate change inaction. On 20 September 2019 in Cape Town, as part of these protests, the African Climate Alliance handed over a memorandum of demands to South African government representatives, one of which was ‘the creation of a mandatory climate-education curriculum for South Africa’ (Knight, 2019). This raises the question of how this imperative could be met within a tertiary music education context. This article offers a preliminary discussion on the underlying theories and possible teaching strategies that could inform a tertiary eco-literate music education in South Africa.

Robin Ann Murray (2015) cautions that ‘the terms environmental education, education for sustainability, ecological literacy, environmental literacy, eco-literacy and eco-pedagogy . . . are not equal . . . ’ (p. 52). Specifically, eco-literacy, to quote Fritjof Capra, refers to ‘an understanding of the principles of the organisation of ecosystems and the application of those principles for creating sustainable human communities and societies’ (Capra in Murray, 2015, p. 54). In 1995, Capra himself, along with Peter Buckley and Zenobia Barlow, cofounded the Center for Ecoliteracy based in Berkeley, California. According to one of its publications, teaching for ecoliteracy

enables educators to foster the kind of learning that meets the critical needs of the twenty-first century – and offers an antidote to the fear, anger, and hopelessness that can result from inaction. It reveals how the very act of engaging in some of today’s great ecological challenges – on whatever scale is possible or appropriate – develops strength, hope, and resiliency in young people. And it presents a model of education for doing so that is founded on a new integration of emotional, social, and ecological intelligence. (Bennett, 2012)

The prefix ‘eco’ is particularly complex and in the context of eco-literacy generally refers to ‘ecological’. The study of ecology is one that ‘considers organism(s), organic and inorganic environments (i.e., contexts), and their many relationships’ (Allen, 2018, p. 3). ² When Daniel J. Shevock (2018, pp. 4–5), writer on eco-literate music pedagogy, uses the term ‘eco-literate’, he is referring to ecology. ³ However, he also refers to the insights of ecomusicology as part of his pedagogy framework. Aaron S. Allen and Kevin Dawe (2016) define ecomusicology as the ‘critical study of music/sound and environment’ (p. 2). In the context of this field, Allen and Dawe (2016) state that the eco prefix ‘is better understood as “eco-critical”’, namely ‘ecological criticism . . . the critical study of literary and other artistic products in relation to the environment’ (p. 2). More recently, Allen (2018) has explained that due to the

particular influence on ecomusicology from . . . ecocriticism . . . ecomusicology . . . is at least one step removed from the science of ecology . . . That removal seems to have resulted in the loss of some of the original, scientific aspects of ecology, but for ecomusicology what remained is decidedly environmental. (p. 6)

For Allen (2018, pp. 3, 6), ‘the problem of ecology’ within the context of music and sound studies is due to the use of the term ‘ecology’ in ways that no longer directly relate to its scientific field, for example, the equating of ‘ecology’ with ‘environment’ (see also Titon, 2018). Allen (2018) thus explains that

it is necessary to disambiguate ecology and environment in order to more accurately and carefully study, understand, advocate, and promote preservation and change with regard to human (musical) cultures, non-human and human soundscapes, and the interactions between them and other biotic [organic] and abiotic [inorganic] contexts. (p. 6)

Thus, ‘the problem of ecology’ within the ecomusicological context also becomes an opportunity, providing that researchers are clear about their definitions and uses of these terms. Allen (2018) believes that ‘[s]uch a pluralistic approach . . . would also contribute to the diversification and development of teaching and research approaches for music and sound studies in general and for ecomusicology in particular’ (p. 11). The myriad ways in which eco-literacy in music and ecomusicology can be taught, then, presents its own ‘problem’ and ‘opportunity’, to extend Allen’s line of thinking. The challenge lies in how to navigate a pedagogical direction amid the variety of theories, but also to take advantage of the plurality of methods and approaches available.

Eco-literate music pedagogy theories

Both eco-literate music and ecomusicology teaching approaches emphasise the importance of place. ⁴ The first of Shevock’s (2015) four main points of a music education that ‘cultivates ecological literacy’ is the idea of ‘[c]onnecting to local places’ (p. 17). In a survey of 28 ecomusicology-related courses, Sonja Downing (2013) explains that ‘one of the most prevalent themes in approaching the teaching of ecomusicology is a focus on the music, sounds, and/or environment of particular geographic locations’ (p. 9).

Despite this shared focus, the emphasis on type of place differs. Shevock’s (2018) approach particularly emphasises the need to start by ‘helping students become conscious of local places’ (p. 10). His remaining three points of an eco-literate music pedagogy also retain this characteristic, namely, ‘[e]xperiencing music and nature in connected, meaningful, and ethical ways; [d]eveloping ecological consciousness by ritualizing and creating music rooted in soil; and [c]onnecting to the planet more broadly by connecting local understandings to global ecological crises’ (Shevock, 2015, p. 17; see also Illich, 1990). He explains that

music teachers and students study the musics that surround them. This leads to teachers and students living well in place, connected to the health of local environments and dedicated to protecting those places. Music teachers and students can be inspired by the musics of non-human life to create musics for performance. These can provide an opportunity for pleasure and a more scientific understanding of these places (what non-human animals music in these places), and then can be connected to broader theories (such as climate change, waste, soil use, transportation, suburbanization), the understanding of which typifies an ecologically literate citizen. (Shevock, 2018, p. 11)

Shevock’s approach thus indicates that beginning with an emphasis on local places ultimately allows for students to connect their findings of local musics and places to global ecological discussions.

While this emphasis on (local) place is fitting due to its recognition as an important starting point in educating for ecological consciousness more generally, Greg Garrard, sustainability professor at the University of British Columbia, is rather sceptical of the emphasis given to place in this framework. In his complex explanation of the pedagogical tenets arising from first and second wave ecocriticism, he explains that ‘there remains a widespread, but largely untested and untheorised assumption that education about the environment (nature writing, ecopoetry and environmental literature) delivered through the environment (place-based education) will automatically be education for the environment’ (Garrard, 2010, p. 241). Instead, he argues for a ‘closer relationship between ecocriticism and environmental education and for ecocritical pedagogy to assume a more sceptical and empirical approach’ (Garrard, 2010, p. 233).

Downing’s neutral phrasing of ‘particular geographic locations’ in her ecomusicology-related course survey appears to incorporate places beyond the immediate local surroundings. While local places do have prevalence in the approaches of organising soundwalks for students (Allen, 2013), and Jennifer C. Post’s (2020) invocation of ‘getting students out to forests, waterways, and grasslands’ (p. 325), the prevalence of ethnomusicologists working in the ecomusicology field (Allen, 2017, p. 95) also means that taught content may feature music in places beyond the local. Downing’s survey indicates a reasonably balanced mix between focus on local places and those further away, but it is important to note that place is not the only theme that she identifies in this overview. Additional themes for teaching approaches include animals, politics and sustainability, and interdisciplinary collaborations (Downing, 2013, p. 10). For Allen (2012a), the educational benefits of ecomusicology include place as only one of six key areas in the field: the others are ‘ecology and acoustic ecology/sound-scapes, biology and biomusic, anthropology and ethnomusicology . . . history and musicology, and sustainability and cultural studies of music’ (p. 5). ⁵ Although the term ‘sustainability’ deserves more detailed consideration (see below), Shevock (2018) also considers it in his statement that ‘[m]usic educators (and all educators) . . . must consider the three postmodern educational “Rs” (reduce, reuse and recycle) when making purchases. They must also consider whether their classroom affirms unsustainable consumer society or challenges it’ (p. 42; see also Titon, 2020). While Shevock draws attention to our own practices as music teachers, Allen (2020, p. 306) advocates for ecomusicologists to consider the anthropocentric (human-centred) nature of the field and to move to a more ecocentric (ecological systems centred) perspective.

These authors’ concern about such relationships, in my view, urges educators to go beyond the reliance on place in considering their teaching strategies and content choices. One way in which it is possible to broaden the teaching approach is to connect theoretical concepts from the study of environmental issues to musical case studies. What follows is a consideration of three possible directions this approach can take, namely, introducing students to the environmental humanities field; the concept of slow violence; and the discourses on extractivism and sustainability.

Environmental humanities and inter-species music making

Robert Emmett and David Nye (2017) explain four main premises of the environmental humanities, namely,

we think global warming is taking place, and do not think it is an open question as to whether human beings have contributed to it or not. ⁶ We believe that species extinction is occurring at an alarming rate, and we reject the notion that humanity has a special place in creation that legitimizes the elimination of other forms of life. We believe that current consumption of the earth’s resources is not sustainable. The seas are overfished, the air is increasingly polluted, the oceans contain vast floating islands of plastic, and the amount of garbage produced by human consumption grows year by year. We think that scientists excel at identifying and explaining such problems, but they alone cannot solve them. Solutions will require political and cultural expertise as well. (p. 1)

Emmett and Nye (2017, pp. 7–8, 21), therefore, believe that an interdisciplinary approach between science, arts, and humanities, but also between the different humanities disciplines is imperative to our ability to solve these complex problems. Shevock, along with the ecomusicologists mentioned earlier, agree on the positive role that interdisciplinarity can and should play (Allen & Dawe, 2016, pp. 7–8; Shevock, 2018, pp. 44–46). Allen (2012a) adds, for instance, that ‘[e]nvironmental leaders need to approach challenges with such creative and multidisciplinary thinking that bridges the sciences, arts and humanities’ (p. 13).

To illustrate the idea of environmental humanities musically one can use the example of David Rothenberg’s (2008) duet with a Humpback whale (see also Pedelty, 2020; Stanley & Phillips, 2017). This does two kinds of work; first, by providing a concrete example of interdisciplinary research (see also Boyle & Waterman, 2016; Guyette & Post, 2016) and second, as a way of critically engaging our anthropocentric ties with music. Our well-known definition of music as humanly organised sound (Blacking, 1973) can now be subjected to new scrutiny. For example, Shevock (2018) defines music as ‘the intentional experiencing of sound and leave[s] whether the intender and experiencer are human to the particular occurrence’ (p. 41, his emphasis). This case study thus allows for a conversation about anthropocentric versus ecocentric approaches and can introduce students to terms such as zoomusicology and biomusic, while raising critical curiosity about animal musicking.

Slow violence and song walking in Maputaland

Rob Nixon highlights the representational dilemmas of ‘slow violence’ as follows:

[b]y slow violence I mean a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all. Violence is customarily conceived as an event or action that is immediate in time, explosive and spectacular in space, and as erupting into instant sensational visibility. We need, I believe, to engage a different kind of violence, a violence that is neither spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its calamitous repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales . . . [A] host of . . . slowly unfolding environmental catastrophes present formidable representational obstacles that can hinder our efforts to mobilize and act decisively . . . Casualties of slow violence – human and environmental – are the casualties most likely not to be seen, not to be counted. (Nixon, 2011, pp. 2, 13)

Nixon explains that one way to counter these representational obstacles is through apprehension, ‘a critical word’, he states,

that draws together the domains of perception, emotion, and action. To engage slow violence is to confront layered predicaments of apprehension: to apprehend – to arrest, or at least mitigate – often imperceptible threats requires rendering them apprehensible to the senses through the work of scientific and imaginative testimony. (Nixon, 2011, p. 14)

In addition, he states that there is an emphasis on the act of seeing as part of apprehension which should be engaged with critically (Nixon, 2011, p. 15). Fostering apprehension through hearing, including music or sound thus constitutes a strong teaching possibility (see also Feld, 1996, 2003; Levin & Süzükei, 2006; Schafer, 1994). ⁷

On the effects of slow violence, Angela Impey’s work furnishes a particularly poignant example. Over the course of 8 years, Impey (2018) undertook ethnographic research with ‘two groups of elderly women’ (p. 3) in western Maputaland, a region of South Africa that borders Mozambique and eSwatini (Swaziland). The women’s playing of the mouth harp (isitweletwele) was used to accompany long-distance walking and through these songs, memories, and stories of this place, Impey (2018, pp. 6–9) reveals how the politics of Transfrontier Conservation Areas has contributed to the gradual silencing of these women’s voices. ⁸ While this case study example allows for discussion of South Africa’s fraught issues of land and conservation (Ndebele, 1998; Nixon, 2011, pp. 175–198; Stanley & Phillips, 2017), Impey’s work highlights the sense of hearing in slow violence, with her focus on musical sound and the politics inherent in its silencing.

Extractivism and making guitars

Naomi Klein (2014) defines ‘extractivism’ as

a nonreciprocal, dominance-based relationship with the earth, one purely of taking . . . [It was] originally used to describe economies based on removing ever more raw materials from the earth, usually for export to traditional colonial powers, where ‘value’ was added . . . Though developed under capitalism, governments across the ideological spectrum now embrace this resource-depleting model as a road to development, and it is this logic that climate change profoundly calls into question. (p. 169) ⁹

It would be ideal to move from this uni-directional extraction pattern to a circular model based on renewal, an approach that keeps the needs of future generations in mind (Klein, 2014, p. 447). Klein (2014) explains that

[l]iving nonextractively does not mean that extraction does not happen: all living things must take from nature in order to survive. But it does mean the end of the extractivist mindset – of taking without caretaking, of treating land and people as resources to deplete rather than as complex entities with rights to a dignified existence based on renewal and regeneration. (p. 447)

This stance can be connected to notions of stewardship, ‘which involves taking but also taking care that regeneration and future life continue’ (Klein, 2014, p. 169; see also Lewis, 2015). Jeff Todd Titon’s (2009b, p. 119) theory of musical sustainability includes stewardship as one of its tenets he adapted from conservation biology; the others are diversity, limits to growth, and interconnectedness. He regards music as a ‘biocultural resource, a product of human life; further, it is a renewable resource . . . In short, sustaining music means sustaining people making music’ (Titon, 2009a, pp. 5–6). Titon’s views have since moved away from this more anthropocentric notion of sustainability (Allen, 2012a, p. 12) to focus on ecology and environment (Allen et al., 2014; see also Titon, 2015). Allen (2019) states that the complex meanings of the word can be broken down to two main understandings, which he calls sustainability-maintain (‘keep[ing] us navigating our established, destructive routes’) and sustainability-change (‘reimagin[ing] modern human civilizations on new, potentially progressive paths’) (p. 44). He explains that while sustainability has often been likened to a three-legged stool comprising ‘nature, society, and business’ (Allen, 2019, p. 48), he would prefer to use a more nested analogy, however, namely nature holding society and business. Allen (2019, p. 48) also introduces a fourth concept, namely aesthetics, to include an arts and humanities aspect here.

The extractivism and sustainability discourses can be linked to musical case study examples in two main topic areas, namely mining and instrument making. Travis D. Stimeling’s (2012) work on mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia is a useful resource, and there are also examples from the South African literature that engage with the country’s own long history of mining activity (Coplan, 1994; Morris, 2008; see also Froneman, 2015). On the topic of materials used to make musical instruments, there are several case study examples from the ecomusicological literature (see Allen, 2012b; Dawe, 2016; Devine, 2015; Ryan, 2015; Smith, 2016). Overall, I have found the Musicwood documentary (Trump & Granger, 2013) to be an excellent introduction to the complex issues of extractivism and sustainability in relation to music (see also Allen, 2017, p. 99). This 80-min film examines the logging practices currently taking place in the Alaskan Tongass National Forest and the consequences of these practices for the local Indigenous communities, logging company shareholders, Greenpeace, and a group of well-known American guitar-making firms. The question that remains is how these terms and case studies can translate to a South African institutional context, a point I discuss more fully below.

Institutional ideas and strategies

Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg (2014) explain that ‘[i]n the early 21st century, the poorest 45% of the human population accounted for 7% of emissions, while the richest 7% produced 50%’ (p. 64; see also Allen, 2018, p. 304). Even though ‘[m]ost African countries do not emit much carbon dioxide’, within the sub-Saharan region, South Africa is the biggest emitter, followed by Nigeria and Zambia (‘A Burning Issue: Africa’s Big Carbon Emitters Admit They Have a Problem’, 2018). Due to its carbon intensive infrastructure, Mithika Mwenda and Patrick Bond (2020) explain that ‘[i]n spite of the excellent conditions for mobilization since the end of apartheid and notwithstanding many environmental struggles, South Africa has been one of the most difficult places to advocate for climate justice’ (p. 7).

Certainly, the national 2015 and 2016 #FeesMustFall protests in the South African university context, with their calls for ‘free decolonised education now’ focussed mainly on social justice (Gillespie & Naidoo, 2019, p. 191). While decolonisation carries many meanings in this discourse (Jansen, 2017, pp. 153–171), Achille Mbembe (2016) has approached this concept by explaining that decolonisation ‘mostly means developing a perspective which can allow us to see ourselves clearly, but always in relationship to ourselves and to other selves in the universe, non-humans included’ (p. 24). Mbembe (2016) adds that decolonisation is ‘not simply about de-Westernization . . . [d]ecolonizing an African university requires a geographical imagination that extends well beyond the confines of the nation-state’ (pp. 18, 24). This suggests that it might be a pedagogically useful strategy to raise students’ climate awareness through case studies both in and beyond their own immediate environments. In addition, South African education scholar Jonathan Jansen (2009) suggests that a particular awareness be given to ‘indirect knowledge’, the ‘transmission of especially traumatic knowledge and memory from one generation to the next’ (p. 52). Students bring this knowledge into the classroom and thus talking about history needs to take place with suitable sensitivity. The contested and often traumatic nature of South African history means that it is sometimes helpful to raise topics using case studies from elsewhere, that nevertheless have strong parallels or similarities to the South African situation (e.g., mining). This makes it possible to discuss the implications of these case studies in non-threatening, perceptive, and respectful ways (see also Jansen, 2009, pp. 255–278). In addition, the rich publication record of South African theoretical perspectives on ecological matters provides strong local intellectual insights that can be applied successfully to relevant musical case studies. I thus believe that it is important to avoid a reliance on a fixed ‘canon’ of reading and listening and aim instead to locate teaching materials that work well in one’s own context.

Although I currently teach across all 4 years of the BMus curriculum, in reality, the material that I present that could be considered part of an eco-literate approach is mainly confined to my second and third-year undergraduate teaching. Of this, more takes place at third-year level in the course entitled Music in Contemporary Lives. This course runs for 7 weeks (half a semester) and is structured using a theme and case studies format. Apart from the music and the environment theme, where I formally introduce the field of ecomusicology, I also cover landscape and heritage themes and so these weeks offer the opportunity to introduce discussions of music, space, and place as well as instrument making materials (in landscape); Titon’s work on music and sustainability (in heritage); pro- and anti-coal songs in the context of Appalachian mountaintop removal mining (Stimeling, 2012; see also Pedelty, 2016; Stimeling, 2016); as well as the environmental humanities, slow violence, and extractivism or sustainability case studies discussed earlier.

In the second-year course, I teach San people’s cosmology in a 2-week module on music and religion which, while focussed on the vocal polyphony of the healing trance dance, also allows for an interdisciplinary exploration of shamanism, rock art, oral literature, anthropology, ritual, and history in relation to these Indigenous peoples. From the second semester of 2021, this module may be expanded to 3 weeks to discuss the instrument making techniques of the musical bow and to explore its manifestations beyond South Africa, for example in Angola and Brazil (see Lucey, 2004). This plan for expansion is in line with our most recent Africanisation of curriculum discussions and allows for the academic course at second-year level to tie in more explicitly (and concurrently) with a module on making Indigenous instruments that already exists in the second year music literacies course. Students will thus be covering the history and cultural significance of the musical bow in their academic course, while learning how to make and play the instrument in the theory course. This approach should make it possible to discuss the historical and contemporary materials used to make the bows to introduce ideas of sustainability.

To close, I have observed that what I currently teach in this area and what ideas and philosophies I have for teaching in this area in future are two different things. The various pedagogical ideas discussed in this article mean that it should be possible to infuse eco-literate insights throughout a course and not only in those modules with titles such as ‘music and the environment’ or the ecologically aware case studies that have obvious thematic links. If we believe that the tenets of reduce, reuse, recycle, and the cultivation of ecological and climate awareness should be an integral part of our daily (and therefore, teaching) lives, then these insights should not be limited to only certain areas of our regular teaching commitments. Following Allen (2017), I think that this does not necessarily entail adding new material, but rather in many cases ‘build[ing] on or contextualiz[ing] further the existing materials’ (p. 101).

Conclusion

We’re all in a great big car driving at a brick wall at 100 mph and everybody is arguing over where they want to sit. My point is it doesn’t matter who’s driving. Somebody has got to say, ‘For God’s sake, put the brakes on and turn the wheel’. (Suzuki in Blatt, 2005, p. 222)

While it is clear that ‘music is obviously not a solution to environmental problems in and of itself’, it can nevertheless ‘nurture our imaginative, emotional and spiritual responses to the natural world’ and thus extend ‘human rationality’ (Ingram, 2010, pp. 238, 240). Allen (2012a, p. 12) agrees with this formulation, but also warns that ‘[w]e must not ignore how cultural actions impact the environment nor how environmental conditions impact human culture’ (Allen, 2020, p. 306). In addition, I believe that the type of connections music can facilitate are compatible with the Center for Ecoliteracy’s five main teaching principles, namely, ‘developing empathy for all forms of life . . . embracing sustainability as a community practice . . . making the invisible visible . . . anticipating unintended consequences . . . [and] . . . understanding how nature sustains life’ (Goleman et al., 2012, pp. 10–11).

Garrard ends his article with the sober statement that

the culture of unsustainability perpetually subjects our students to extremely well-funded, cleverly-designed campaigns of persuasion and misinformation during many of the hours when we do not have their attention . . . In such a context, and given the urgency of a shift to some form of sustainable development, only the most effective ecocritical pedagogy is defensible. (pp. 242–243)

This urgent mandate is both inspiring and daunting. It is my hope that this contribution can be viewed as a step towards facilitating ongoing discussions on the development of eco-literate music pedagogy materials and curricula within local tertiary institutional contexts.