Ecocentrism in Music and Sound Oases | Lecture with Eka Chabashvili

"Humans are facing a great challenge in the new Anthropocene era of the Earth – the threat of an ecological disaster. Dealing with the crisis and correcting our mistakes are the duty of all people, regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, political or other affiliation.

Sound, and music are part of the Earth’s ecosystem. Therefore, research on their positive and negative impact is important for a clean and healthy environment. That is why a new discipline of musicology has emerged in modern musicology - ecomusicology, which studies the processes of interaction in music, society and environmental system. It was by imitating nature that man learned to create instruments, and over time, based on instrumental modifications and various artificially created rules, he developed a variety of sounds. Music moved away from its real environment and, as a result of the formation of aesthetic norms, was separated from the general sound of the universe.

As Aaron S. Allen and Jeff Todd Titon explain: “Ecocentric music scholarship decentres the human: the environment is no longer regarded merely as context, but as “the thing itself” that includes the human along with everything else, the biotic and abiotic.”

The factors described above are also reflected in the music and influence the elements that express the musical idea, for example, the type of texture. We can divide the approach to musical material for composing into three types:

• Natural Ecocentric
• Egocentric
• Conscious Ecocentric

The main purpose of our lecture is comparison of the anthropocentric and ecocentric attitudes towards the ecological environment which are also reflected at the musical thinking. 

At the lecture we will discuss about the above-mentioned approaches to music creation and describe the principles of ecomusic composition for alternative concert locations, called "Sound Oases"; The concept about eco-centric music, was Inspired by R. Murray Schafer’s ideas on soundscapes and tuning the world, viewing natural environments as instruments. and compose musical works to be performed in those locations."

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