Recomposing the Sound Commons

Abstract

Abstract A network of environmental scientists, community organizers, and artists advocated for, and achieved, new policies to protect Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKW) from the disruptive noise of motors. They did so despite the opposition of a financially and culturally dominant whale-watching industry. That hopeful story is documented here in this case study of musical organizing. Jeff Todd Titon’s “sound commons” (2012) concept provides a theoretical framework for understanding the case, one that provides insights into how we might realize Titon’s goal of extending “sound equity … to all creatures.” The author makes an argument for adopting ecological orientations to soundscape (re)composition; in other words, relational, systemic, and holistic understandings of environmental phenomena, environmental challenges, and policy. In the Anthropocene we must therefore include music, media, and communication in our ecological modeling, rather than treat them as ephemera or merely translative tools. By foregrounding a fictional story in Silent Spring (1962), biologist Rachel Carson made a compelling argument for the ecological role of creative expression, a model that musicians, musical organizers, and applied music scholars would do well to emulate.

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