Contribution short abstract:

The study explores the intersection of musical practices and environmental awareness, seeking to demonstrate how music could contribute to our understanding of sustainable relationships with nature, and to reveal the potential of music performances in creating and promoting eco-friendly practices.

Contribution long abstract:

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are based on economic, social, and environmental aspects. Nevertheless, the crises of the 21st century reveal that sustainable development cannot be complete without a cultural dimension. One of the essential functions of culture and arts nowadays is to restart humanistic values and promote empathy and sensitivity towards more-than-human Earth (Abram), revising our relationships with non-human agents, animals, plants, things, and technological artefacts, thus implementing the idea of Humilicene and ascertaining that the anthropocentrism of modernity, treating man as the master of nature, is neither resilient nor sustainable.

Our presentation is based on an ecomusicological approach, which synthesises musicology, ecocriticism, and cultural studies, offering new perspectives on the interconnections between music, culture, and nature (Allen) and promoting creativity, imagination, and empathy in raising awareness of environmental challenges. The aim of the study is to explore the intersection of musical practices and environmental awareness, seeking to demonstrate how musical traditions could contribute to our understanding of sustainable relationships with nature, and to reveal the potential of music performances in creating and promoting eco-friendly practices. The empirical data of the study are primarily based on an autoethnographic approach: from the perspective of the ethnomusicologist and composer himself, the analysis of sources of inspiration and motivation (Lovelock, Abram, Gerrard, Poulelaouen) in relation to his musical cycle “Gaïa”, which illuminates the potential of the primordial culture to modern society, is offered.