Since the Turtle Dove pilgrimage that I wrote about in my last post, I have been thinking about the intertwining of artistic and cultural discourse with the more obvious tangible elements of ecosystems. One of my fellow pilgrims is an archaeologist at UCD, and he remarked around the fire that for his discipline, the concept of landscape would also encapsulate elements such as human use of the landscape, history, crafts and artistic remnants. This chimes with the UNESCO definition of cultural heritage which is seen as "not limited to monuments and collections of objects. It is also comprised of living expressions inherited from our ancestors, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social manners, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices related to nature and the universe, and knowledge and techniques linked to traditional crafts."
This thinking was further consolidated by watching a 'listening session' courtesy of Flourishing Diversity, who provide opportunities to hear from representatives of various indigenous cultures around the world. The particular session that pricked my interest featured Nemonte Nenquimo, an Indigenous Waorani leader from the Amazon. You can watch the session here. What particularly resonated for me was that Nemonte started the session by singing, which is a key part of Waorani culture, before going onto explain about the relationship between her people and the wider ecosystem (as well as threats to both).
It struck me that song and story were somehow vessels or carriers of the relationship or intertwining of Waorani and Amazon. And that the stewardship of the ecosystem and the people living within it, by necessity must include nurturing the songs and stories that have grown from it. Not for some academic, archival or conservative purposes, but because they are inextricably part of that wider ecosystem, not separate objects that stand or fall. Not knowing the specific songs and stories of that people, I cannot say for certain, but I suspect that as with many indigenous cultures, these include myriad reflections of the ways in which people and wider ecosystem co-exist, details of animals, plants and weather events as colour, as analogy and as characters in their own right.
This is certainly the case with English folk song, which is rich in these ways; what I don't know is whether the Victorian song collectors and others who played a key role in preserving these songs had any inkling of this. There was certainly intent around somehow preserving a glimpse of pre-industrial, more pastoral way of life that was disappearing around them, but whether this was also informed by concern around threats to the ecosystems in which these ways of life existed is not a given. That may be an anachronistic perspective on my part.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that there is explicit ecological benefit in preserving traditional song for greater than artistic reasons. And for me that is because of the wisdom that is implicit in material that shows the interconnectedness of humanity and the natural world, and how generations of humans trod more lightly on the earth than we do largely today. If we are to rise to the challenge of climate change, habitat and biodiversity loss, I think there is a key role in not only preserving and sharing this material, but also connecting each other to it, as a conduit for connection to the wider ecosystem, the very cradle of our lives.
If music and songs are only seen as entertainment, or worse, commodities to be traded and made profit from, then we are simply asset-stripping our common inheritance, as much as we are asset stripping our planet. To sing traditional song, therefore becomes, to me, a political, ecological and even a sacred act. A grand claim to end on, but one which I need to explore further...no doubt with a finger in my ear no doubt!
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