Paper short abstract:

Religion is partly responsible for environmental crises, as it offers values, guidelines, and soundscapes. In a combination of Ecomusicology and Human-Animal Studies I demonstrate the investigation of social and religious structures in the cross-species soundscape of theyyam, a rural Hindu ritual.

Paper long abstract:

Can climate change and its various effects on humans, non-human animals, and the environment be heard? Can soundscapes and careful listening be used to plan measures that indicate changes, to optimize everyday life?

My contribution includes a case study on theyyam, one of the richest ritual, mythical, and performative traditions of South Indian popular worship, associated with rural Hinduism, especially with its folk and tribal religious aspects. In theyyam rituals—North Kerala’s sonic signature—media of local deities, ghosts, heroes, and non-human animals enable a visual and acoustic, easily accessible revelation of the respective deity through transformation. Decisive aspects of Hinduism, such as reincarnation, karma theory, ahiṃsā (noninjury), and the associated claim to cross-species empathy, play fundamental roles, which underlines the necessity to investigate a deity’s accompanying non-human animals and representations in theriomorphic forms.

The case study is guided by the idea that religion is partly responsible for environmental crises, which means that one should carefully reinterpret and recontextualize religious traditions—with their rituals and scriptures—in the 21st century. World religions each offer a unique pool of moral values, rules, and thus soundscapes that guide people in their relationship with non-human animals and the environment. I use a combination of ethnomusicological methods with questions of Ecomusicology—a multidisciplinary field for the study of musics, culture, and nature—and Human-Animal Studies to show that the attention of soundscapes should not overly focus on acoustics, but that social and religious structures are also worth to be considered.