Music in a Burning World Baking Bodies: Missing Peace of Nature

 

Source: EIA                                                                                                               

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”.

In the video “World on Fire” this great singer sits atop a burning world, looking at the flames, and singing:

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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