Music in a Burning World Baking Bodies: Missing Peace of Nature
We always try to relax listening to
the songs of Peace of Nature and now, with sadness, we already have the
interpretation of what the music of the world in flames means, roasting human and
non-human bodies, plants, and everything else. Some musicians, composers, and
singers are involved in our ecological crisis, according to the video below.
Last week the United Nations
Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, mentioned that Humanity is in the hotseat,
after getting information from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and
the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. The data released
from these two organizations confirmed that July was the hottest month recorded
in human history.
The Secretary-General stated that the
consequences of this terrifying moment are tragic and climate change is here at
a surprising speed when we see families running from flames and workers
collapsing in boiling heat. For him, the “era of global warming has ended; the
era of global boiling has arrived.” It seems that this scenario is just the
beginning, and there is nothing we can do. We have done it already – the planet's
destruction starting with animal extermination.
The devastation of Mother Earth is
so evident that many areas of studies are trying to understand and interpret
the end of the planet. In a recent event at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute,
Harvard University, the ex-environmental activist, and composer John Luther
Adams was invited to present his music and to express his view on the
relationship between Music and Nature.
In his deep and critical research
work, John Adams found that both art and music are as much important as
activism and politics. For him, “our political systems have become increasingly
dysfunctional, and arts are more than politics”. As a composer, he believes
that “music has the power to inspire human consciousness, culture, and
politics”.
The power of music is also recognized
by many researchers and organizations, including the USA Academy of Country
Music (ACM). However, the field of music and sustainability is
under-researched, making it difficult to increase the awareness and
participation of music-sustainability in the environment.
We need a critical discussion of the
potential of training music-sustainability competencies, bearing in mind that
the diverse combinations of art and sustainability is important for knowledge
production, with “art connecting knowledge, morality, beauty, and everyday
life, as constitutive of sustainable behavior”.
In sustainability studies, especially
social sustainability, I can see that Mother Earth is demanding a change in our
behavior and the main thrust for this change is to increase our values of Mother Earth. I believe that music sustainability can change the behavior of
those ones who are increasingly buying more from great polluting corporations in
both developing and developed countries, with the help of our technology.
In short, it is time to disseminate by mass media both popular, country, and classical music related to Nature, being devastated
by human actions. Recently, both in the United States and Brazil this was done
with the complicity of the political power.
We know that both the United States
and China are responsible for 40% of the world's pollution. These two countries
are doing a lot to reduce it, by producing electrical cars, and renewable energy
sources such as solar panels, but the use of fossil fuel, as a great polluter,
continues.
Finally, music can be used in a
critical way to understand what is wrong in this burning world. While the
composer John Luther Adams has mentioned that our political systems are
dysfunctional, the American iconic singer, Dolly Parton, a few months ago, has
taken seemingly a political position criticizing our politicians for this world
mess.
No doubt, the song “World on Fire” is
about many things, including our climate nightmare, the Russia War in Ukraine,
hate, and greed. Dolly´s song is a reflection for all of us. As she has
mentioned: “I think it speaks about everything and to everyone this day and
time”. The world is baking our bodies because “we lost sight of common
decency”.
Liar, liar the world's on fire
Whatcha gonna do when it all burns down?
.
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Now how are we to live in a world like this
Greedy
politicians, present and past
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