Category: Soundscapes
Saturday’s Endangered Music: The BaAka Pygmies of Cameroon
Some of the most beautiful and emotionally affecting singing I know of comes fro the BaAka Pygmies of Cameroon, who yodel polyrhythmic songs of love and respect for the forest that gives them life: DAKAR (AlertNet) – An increase in sea level and a drop in the quantity of rainfall linked to climate change could […]
Saturday’s Endangered Music: Tuva
“Throat Singing” from the Siberian nation of Tuva is one of the most remarkable phenomena in all world music; individual voices are trained to produce multi-note melody-and-drone combinations. I first heard this music as an example in one of the Cantometrics training tapes, back in the 1970s, and it was a revelation. A lot of […]
Saturday’s Endangered Music: Kashmir
In 1986, a friend and I traveled to Kashmir, which had not yet become a problematic destination for Western tourists. I had been bewitched by Kashmiri music since first hearing David Lewiston‘s wonderful recordings on the Nonesuch Explorer label in the mid-1970s, and I knew that I wanted to see and hear Kashmir for myself. […]
Skating On Thin Ice: Music of Climate Change
Got an email at theclimatemessage@gmail.com linking to this extraordinary piece of work: Speculative Pop (Specu-Pop) . What would the world be like if the Arctic melted and became the new Mediterranean? Written in 60 tone equal temperament. Robin Perry self-describes: I’m a microtonal composing enthusiast, experimenter in tonality and musical instruments. I live in Toowoomba, […]
Saturday’s Endangered Music: Fiji
Fiji is another one of the island nations looking to a climate-changed future that’s just around the corner. Some villages are already relocating inland to avoid the rising sea levels that Fijians have already started noticing: Vunidogoloa is the first village to be relocated under the climate change program. Acting Commissioner Northern Alipate Bolalevu said […]
“Wounds” is Spelled Almost Like “Sounds”
“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the […]
Saturday’s Endangered Music: The Jarawa People of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
A Jarawa Song. WIth limestone caves, gorgeous beaches, and mud volcanoes, the Andaman and Nicobar islands have become increasingly popular as a tourist destination in India. But it’s not just the natural scenery and the wildlife that has raised the international profile of this small archipelago. The “Jarawa” tribal peoples are one of the few […]
Saturday’s Endangered Music: The Inuit
More than perhaps any other culture in the world, the Inuit peoples are on the absolute front line of our changing climate. The Arctic regions are heating up far faster than the rest of the planet, triggering cultural changes which are overwhelming on all levels. The United States’ first climate change refugees are probably going […]
Junkies Can’t Care
Australia is hell-bent on destroying itself and everything around it. The new anti-science, pro-coal government is eagerly moving forward with plans to dump huge amounts of mining sludge right on the Great Barrier Reef and dredge a passageway through this incredible natural wonder to allow transport ships free access to a terminal at Abbot Point. […]