Dissertation by Andrew Mark
This dissertation concerns making music as a utopian ecological practice, skill, or method of ass... more This dissertation concerns making music as a utopian ecological practice, skill, or method of associative communication where participants temporarily move towards idealized relationships between themselves and their environment. Live music making can bring people together in the collective present, creating limited states of unification. We are “taken” by music when utopia is performed and brought to the present. From rehearsal to rehearsal, band to band, year to year, musicking binds entire communities more closely together. I locate strategies for community solidarity like turn-taking, trust-building, gift-exchange, communication, fundraising, partying, education, and conflict resolution as plentiful within musical ensembles in any socially environmentally conscious community.
Based upon 10 months of fieldwork and 40 extended interviews, my theoretical assertions are grounded in immersive ethnographic research on Hornby Island, a 12-square-mile Gulf Island between mainland British Columbia and Vancouver Island, Canada. I describe how roughly 1000 Islanders struggle to achieve environmental resilience in a uniquely biodiverse region where fisheries collapsed, logging declined, and second-generation settler farms were replaced with vacation homes in the 20th century. Today, extreme gentrification complicates housing for the island’s vulnerable populations as more than half of island residents live below the poverty line. With demographics that reflect a median age of 62, young individuals, families, and children are squeezed out of the community, unable to reproduce Hornby’s alternative society.
This dissertation begins with theorization that connects music making to community and environmental thought. I then represent the challenges Islanders set for themselves and the struggles they face, like their desire for food sovereignty, off-grid energy, secure housing, protection of their aquifers, affordability of ferry transportation, ecological waste-cycles, and care for each other’s mental health. I bring attention to unique institutions that Islanders have created to better manage their needs and desires. In response to the island’s social and environmental dynamics of justice, I argue and demonstrate through ethnography that music making is an essential communal process that brings people together to dialogue about their needs and advance their goals to establish a more equitable and environmentally responsible community.
Published by Andrew Mark
Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures, Oct 2, 2017
This article offers ways of considering the relationship between musicking,
community, and place... more This article offers ways of considering the relationship between musicking,
community, and place that arose from research with residents of Hornby Island, British
Columbia. I advance a theory of vibe that captures how Hornby Islanders understand the
role of musicking in their society and its importance for community solidarity, and I offer
practical examples of this theory in action. Throughout the article, I discuss the
relationship between Islanders’ ideas, Charles Keil’s theory of participatory discrepancies
and my conclusions.
Ethnomusicological institutions transform traditional Zimbabwean musics into
what is practiced in... more Ethnomusicological institutions transform traditional Zimbabwean musics into
what is practiced in North America and understood by thousands as “Shona music.”
This process produces a false narrative within North America of endangered and
scarce traditional Zimbabwean musical practices, and these ends serve neocolonial
imaginings of the need and right for white stewardship over and charity towards
traditional Zimbabwean music(ians). Such a history strikingly reflects dominant
and reductive North American settler conceptions of the wilderness, national
parks and Indigenous peoples as ecologically vulnerable and in need of protection.
Though this process has also fostered a worthy musical bond between Africans and
North Americans, it has come at the expense of unfettered economic, artistic and
political agency for Zimbabwean musicians and instrument builders who transact
their traditional musics internationally. Working towards an anti-oppressive, ethnographic, ecocritical and ecomusicological approach to interpreting the phenomenon of North American Zimbabwean music, this article addresses the proposal that North America could be an archive for scarce authentic traditional Zimbabwean musics.
Les institutions ethnomusicologiques transforment les musiques traditionnelles
du Zimbabwe en ce qui est pratiqué et reconnu par des milliers, en Amérique du
Nord, comme « Musique Shona ». Ce processus produit, en Amérique du Nord,
un récit erroné des pratiques musicales traditionnelles du Zimbabwe en voie de
disparition et nourrit l’imaginaire néocolonial sur le besoin et la légitimité d’une
intendance blanche et de charité envers les musiciens et les musiques traditionnelles
du Zimbabwe. Une telle histoire souligne les conceptions dominantes et
réductives associées à la mentalité coloniale en Amérique du Nord. Les espaces
naturels et sauvages, les parcs nationaux et les peuples autochtones sont considérés
comme étant écologiquement vulnérables et ayant besoin d’être protégés. Bien que
ce processus ait créé un lien musical louable entre Africains et Nord-Américains, il
s’est développé au détriment du libre-arbitre économique artistique et politique des musiciens et des luthiers zimbabwéens qui ouvrent leurs musiques traditionnelles
à l’international. En développant une approche anti-oppressive, ethnographique,
écocritique et écomusicologique pour interpréter le phénomène de la musique zimbabwéenne nord-américaine, cet article aborde la question de la constitution d’une
archive des musiques authentiques traditionnelles rares du Zimbabwe, en Amérique
du Nord.
The diverse fronts of responses to environmental losses are so numerous that voicing similar expe... more The diverse fronts of responses to environmental losses are so numerous that voicing similar experiences of loss and similar priorities for resisting loss seems an unlikely prospect. However, opportunities for consensus and shared ground within this vast field are few and far enough between, and discussing the importance of loss through melancholy and mourning across specialties dialogically presents thought-provoking moments for general connection and ethical consideration. As environmental losses magnify and diversify, environmentalists—new and old—are prone to melancholic despair and quarantined angst without recourse to many others for support. This chapter describes Melancholy, Mourning, and Environmental Thought: Making Loss the Centre, Parts I and II, the first episode from our podcast series, CoHearence. In this episode we discover the perspectives of six environmental academics on mourning in melancholy in relation to each other and environmental thought. In this chapter we highlight and investigate the moments of connection that solidify from these multiple perspectives. In so doing, we arrive at suggestions for how to deal with a movement that can appear melancholically frozen and depressed. Our aim is to match this episode and this chapter together to help foster methods for responding to loss with resistant mourning. We present podcasting as a particularly useful and creative medium for fostering a wider community of mourning where environmentalists can find support.
Joe Hill, a labour activist and singer-songwriter of the early 20th century, is best remembered t... more Joe Hill, a labour activist and singer-songwriter of the early 20th century, is best remembered today for the slogan, “Don’t mourn, organize!” This paper confronts Hill’s sentiment. When acknowledging the irreparable damages the human species is inflicting upon itself and the planet, immediate action feels required. These motivations are laudable, but they also represent an impulse to repress considered confrontation with the past. How will ecomusicology contribute a new perspective to environmental loss and failure? The creative arts give language, signification, ritual, and community to otherwise unspeakable, un-acknowledgeable, and un-grievable loss. The (Freudian) psychic structure of late capitalism, of commodity fetishism, asks consumers to replace lost objects with new attachments. Environmental campaigns ask the concerned to move attention from one endangered species to the next, from one vanishing old growth rainforest to another, just as National Geographic catalogs the artifacts of stressed and disappearing cultures, constantly producing new opportunities for passing attachment in a slideshow of nostalgia. Modern society only begins processes of veneration, salvage, and preservation when it is sure of its ability to wipe something out in the first place, but the arts offer unique practices that challenge our accountability. Music in relation to these processes and art forms in particular has unique assets for reparative practice. This article represents an acknowledgment of a new shift in the environmental movement towards more concerted focus on mourning and melancholy and what opportunities may exist for ecomusicologists in this burgeoning theoretical space.
Environmental Humanities, May 2014
This paper describes Bob Wiseman’s allegorical piece, Uranium, arguing that it accesses emotion t... more This paper describes Bob Wiseman’s allegorical piece, Uranium, arguing that it accesses emotion to alter the consciousness of percipients. Audiences respond with unusual intensity to Uranium’s tragic environmental narrative. By using puppet theatre, film, comedy, and song to win their trust, Wiseman is able to shock his spectators. With interviews and consideration of the semiotic content of Uranium, I explore possibilities for activation of ecological consciousness through performing arts. Building on the shared ideas of Heinrich von Kleist, Gregory Bateson, and Thomas Turino, I argue that Wiseman offers one particularly useful mechanism to advance environmental concerns and learning through the arts. This paper seeks to bridge environmental and (ethno)musicological thought, and has specific relevance to the growing field of ecomusicology, presenting a musical ethnographic case-study in singer-song-writer activism.
Current Directions in Ecomusicology
What about playing music, as an activity, might contribute to the environmental movement? Might i... more What about playing music, as an activity, might contribute to the environmental movement? Might it do anything at all, or, is asking such a question to fiddle while Rome burns? This chapter discusses how I developed a critical environmental ethnographic research methodology to promote justice for a community that is struggling to replicate its radical ecologies of self governance and identity as a place for counter culture experimentation. I discovered that on Hornby Island in British Columbia, Canada, playing music contributes in important and significant ways to the solidarity of this small rural community that is facing a difficult future. On Hornby, musicians intervene into the island’s “vibe” to create a feeling of togetherness, even while young people struggle to find ways to make a home and a living in the community. With rising ferry fees, land taxes, property prices, housing inequality, gentrification, poverty, water needs, an average age of 66, and a struggling tourist economy, islanders have remarkable systems of self governance to manage their annual population that moves quickly from 800 to 5,000 for only two summer months of the year. In my description of the band-as-community on Hornby, I tease out how those soft skills one develops in dialogue with others in rehearsal are essential to creating and promoting the island’s capacity to continue to (or at least aspire to) subvert mainland norms of life in pursuit of wealth and consumption.
Ethnologies, Jun 2011
"Gnawa Diffusion est un groupe musical à succès de première et de seconde génération d’immigrants... more "Gnawa Diffusion est un groupe musical à succès de première et de seconde génération d’immigrants d’Afrique du Nord, qui a atteint une importante renommée en Afrique du Nord, au Moyen-Orient et en Europe au cours des deux dernières décennies. Ses membres sont établis en France, mais d’origine Algérienne. Leur message politisé et égalitaire a atteint le monde entier. L’habileté des musiciens, leurs instrumentations, leurs goûts et le message qu’ils envoient à la jeunesse ont porté leur musique sur la scène mondiale. Dans son travail, Gnawa Diffusion soulève une panoplie de questions politiques et cherche à représenter son public. Sa popularité a atteint des sommets au plus fort de la guerre civile algérienne. En analysant l’origine du nom du groupe, ce document retrace les événements et les cultures qui ont influencé Gnawa Diffusion, en explorant l’histoire des Gnaoua, l’histoire de l’Algérie, les relations entre la France et l’Afrique du Nord et la musique contemporaine française. Les questions de l’identité culturelle et de la représentation sont étroitement superposées aux intentions du groupe et au processus de production artistique. Parce que Gnawa Diffusion a été pensé et conçu par Amazigh Kateb Yassine, et parce que ce dernier a été reconnu comme le porte-parole et le principal auteur de Gnawa Diffusion, sa vie et ses mots accompagnent l’analyse de ce journal. L’étude des conséquences de la traite négrière d’Afrique du Nord, de la propagation de l’islam, de la colonisation de l’Afrique du Nord et de l’immigration algérienne en France nous permet de comprendre comment Gnawa Diffusion a su créer la nouvelle musique d’une génération qui cherche à surmonter les divisions héritées culturellement. Dans ce cas-ci, la musique défie les notions communes d’authenticité, ce qui transparaît dans les performances du groupe.
Gnawa Diffusion was a successful musical group of first- and second-generation North African immigrants that achieved significant fame in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe during the last two decades. Based in France, though from Algeria, their politicized egalitarian message reached the world. Their musical skills, instrumentation, tastes and appeal to youth sounds, sentiments and meanings gave their globalized music a prominent place on the global stage. In their work Gnawa Diffusion addressed a panoply of political issues and sought to represent and reach their audience. Their greatest popularity came at the height and conclusion of the Algerian civil war. By parsing the meanings of the band’s name, this paper engages the events and cultures that informed Gnawa Diffusion, exploring the history of the Gnawa, the history of Algeria, and the relationships between France, North Africa and contemporary “French” music. Issues of cultural authenticity and representation are tightly layered within the band’s purposes and process of artistic production. Because Gnawa Diffusion was envisioned, organized and led by Amazigh Kateb Yassin, and because the band and media recognized him as the spokesperson and principal author for Gnawa Diffusion, Amazigh’s life story and words accompany this paper’s arguments and analysis. Through a selective sketch of the various musical consequences of the North African slave trade, the spread of Islam, the colonization of North Africa and the immigration of Algerians to France, we can begin to comprehend how these histories combined and harmonized through Gnawa Diffusion to form the new musical forms of a generation of people who seek to overcome their often divisive cultural heritage. In this case, the intent of the music challenges common notions of authenticity and thereby affirms it."
Territoires musicaux mis en scène, 2011
Hip-hop group the Divided Kingdom Republic (dkr) present a fascinating opportunity to examine how... more Hip-hop group the Divided Kingdom Republic (dkr) present a fascinating opportunity to examine how the struggle for creative authenticity and signature sounds within the boundaries of pop music can push artists to engage their indigenous heritage. This paper examines the dkr’s creative process while problematizing their use of the mbira dzaVadzimu musical instrument. Through transcription analysis and conversations with the dkr, it unpacks layers of meaning within their songs as they relate to their transnational lives. Ultimately it argues that by successfully challenging authenticities of mbira and hip-hop performance through unique musical endeavor, Munyaradzi and Kudakwashe have established visions and goals that offer an impressive reinterpretation of mbira music for Zimbabwean musicians to gather behind.
Forthcoming/In Review by Andrew Mark
This article reviews the literature for the field of ecomusicology and then makes an argument for... more This article reviews the literature for the field of ecomusicology and then makes an argument for the inclusion of sociomusicology within the field. The article highlights the relevance of a sociological ethnographic vantage point for revealing the environmental consequences of playing music. In contrast to what has gone before as ecomusicological that is preoccupied with metaphoric, symbolic, and material connection to the natural world, a sociomusicological vantage point focuses on the socially constructed nature of music making. By detailing the social processes of making music, other environmental consequences of “music” become apparent, like community solidarity.
Confronted by the audacity of nuclear hubris and the depth of the sounding, echo, and recoil betw... more Confronted by the audacity of nuclear hubris and the depth of the sounding, echo, and recoil between the timely decision to build a nuclear facility and the known and unknown future consequences of doing so, an activist has any number of paths to communicate her frustration with nuclear advocates who fabricate the consent of the un-polled past, present, and future. Bob Wiseman, one of Canada’s best known and yet underappreciated independent artists, uses allegory and environmental mourning to make his case against such Faustian overreach. In contrast to oblique and smooth attempts to sell his audiences on changing their environmental habits and awareness, Wiseman uses open and obvious performative allegory to brazenly critique his adversaries and shock his patrons. Walter Benjamin claimed Baudelaire’s genius was in allegory and was fed by his melancholy. He felt allegory allowed for commemoration without the detrimental effects of romantic nostalgia. Within the environmental humanities, the power of mourning for effecting change or at least drawing public attention to environmental loss in new ways is receiving increasing and fruitful attention. For example, Ashlee Cunsolo Willox’s research into the impact of climate change on traditional ways of knowing and being for the Inuit—their very ontologies—is changing public discourse on the rising importance of solastalgia, Glenn Albrecht’s concept that ties mental health and environmental loss tightly together through nostalgia. This paper discusses the potential for an ecomusicology of mourning and allegory as advanced in practice by Wiseman’s artistry and theory by Benjamin’s Baudelaire.
Reviews by Andrew Mark
The Goose: Journal for the Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada , 2013
Podcasts by Andrew Mark
CoHearence, 2012
Discussions about melancholy and mourning pop up in a wide range of disciplines. For scholars in ... more Discussions about melancholy and mourning pop up in a wide range of disciplines. For scholars in environmental studies, understanding these concepts is important as we try to figure out how to deal with the unprecedented environmental losses of our time. In the first part of this two-part episode of CoHearence, we explore the history of melancholia and why it’s important for thinking about environmental issues. Faced with an increasing amount of environmental destruction and frightening levels of species extinction, we will ask how we might begin to learn to grieve the lost objects everywhere around us. Featuring professors Cate Sandilands and Peter Timmerman from the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) at York University, and Susan Moore a part-time faculty member at FES and psychoanalytical candidate at the Toronto Psychoanalytical Institute, we’ll map out Freud’s thinking on mourning and melancholy and draw links to our current environmental state. If we think of our culture as a melancholic culture, how might we better understand commodity fetishism, the commodification of environmental loss, and where to go from here?
CoHearence, 2012
As we discussed in part one of this two part series, melancholy and mourning permeate environment... more As we discussed in part one of this two part series, melancholy and mourning permeate environmental thought and colour the way that we approach activism. In this episode, our focus shifts from the history of melancholy and mourning to specific examples of mourning in environmental and social justice activism. We search for ways that we might begin to engage in forms of resistant mourning that “worry the wound” in a more respectful, ethical, and productive way. How might mourning become part of an environmental activism that doesn’t busy itself with looking from one lost nature to the next, but instead both acknowledges loss and demands that we take the time and do the work required to move through those losses? Featuring Ralph Carl Wushke, United Church of Canada minister and Chaplin and PhD student at the University of Toronto, Ella Soper, part-time faculty at the University of Toronto and post-doctoral fellow at the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) at York University, and Honor Ford Smith, professor at FES we continue our conversations with Cate Sandilands, Peter Timmerman, and Susan Moore from FES about the importance of mourning for environmental thought and activism. We ask: how can mourning be political? What can resistant mourning look like for environmentalists? What is the role of writers, poets, and artists in mourning environmental loss?
CoHearence, 2012
The title of this episode, Resistance for Breakfast: Hegemony, Arts, and Environment, is a playfu... more The title of this episode, Resistance for Breakfast: Hegemony, Arts, and Environment, is a playful departure from Peter Schumann’s words, and suggests that, perhaps, we could all use a little more resistance in our diet. We will investigate how hegemonic power manifests itself in environmental art and how art practices can also expose and challenge such power. Hegemony is a social condition in which dominant groups exercise power in all aspects of social reality not through militarized violence but rather through implied means (Mayo, 35). The scholars, activists, and educators we speak with call for resistance to hegemonic power that is not only critical and subversive but also beautiful.
Photo: Andrew Mark, 2012
Photo: Andrew Mark, 2012
Featuring interviews with FES Professor Deborah Barndt, storyteller and FES contract faculty Chris Cavanagh, FES PhD candidate Heather McLean, and artist and FES PhD candidate Edie Steiner, we will discuss the ways ‘the arts’ reinforce common sense understandings of what constitutes ‘good art.’ We’ll also explore the problematic relationship between large art festivals and local arts movements and suggest ways in which critical environmental art practices can facilitate meaningful activism and create change.
CoHearence, 2012
In the fall of 2011, ecocritics, writers, and poets from across Canada attended a conference at t... more In the fall of 2011, ecocritics, writers, and poets from across Canada attended a conference at the Gladstone hotel in Toronto. This conference, entitled “Green Words/Green Worlds: Environmental Literatures and Politics in Canada,” focused on the relationship between the cultivation of an environmental reading (and writing) practice and engaged eco-politics. In this CoHearence episode, we’ll use recorded material collected at the conference as well as a follow-up interview with the conference organizers to explore the ways that Canadian ecocritics and poets are engaging with the challenging environmental questions of our time. Featuring conference organizers Catriona Sandilands and Ella Soper as well as keynote presenters Adam Dickinson, Anne, Milne, and Molly Wallace, we’ll ask the question: in a world increasingly characterized by climate change, environmental disasters, and technology, why does literature matter? How can an
environmental writing practice be a political act?
CoHearence, 2012
In the second part of CoHearence’s look at the 2011 conference, Green Words/Green Worlds: Environ... more In the second part of CoHearence’s look at the 2011 conference, Green Words/Green Worlds: Environmental Literatures and Politics in Canada, we continue our investigation of the relationship between the cultivation of an environmental reading (and writing) practice and engaged eco-politics. Featuring excerpts from the Green Words/Green Worlds opening public poetry panel which included keynote presenters Brian Bartlett, Armand Garnett Ruffo and Rita Wong, we build on our discussion with conference organizers Catriona Sandilands and Ella Soper about why literature is important for environmental thought and action. We explore how and why Canadian ecocritics and poets are engaging with the challenging environmental questions of our time and provide perspectives for rethinking the way we imagine our environment.
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Dissertation by Andrew Mark
Based upon 10 months of fieldwork and 40 extended interviews, my theoretical assertions are grounded in immersive ethnographic research on Hornby Island, a 12-square-mile Gulf Island between mainland British Columbia and Vancouver Island, Canada. I describe how roughly 1000 Islanders struggle to achieve environmental resilience in a uniquely biodiverse region where fisheries collapsed, logging declined, and second-generation settler farms were replaced with vacation homes in the 20th century. Today, extreme gentrification complicates housing for the island’s vulnerable populations as more than half of island residents live below the poverty line. With demographics that reflect a median age of 62, young individuals, families, and children are squeezed out of the community, unable to reproduce Hornby’s alternative society.
This dissertation begins with theorization that connects music making to community and environmental thought. I then represent the challenges Islanders set for themselves and the struggles they face, like their desire for food sovereignty, off-grid energy, secure housing, protection of their aquifers, affordability of ferry transportation, ecological waste-cycles, and care for each other’s mental health. I bring attention to unique institutions that Islanders have created to better manage their needs and desires. In response to the island’s social and environmental dynamics of justice, I argue and demonstrate through ethnography that music making is an essential communal process that brings people together to dialogue about their needs and advance their goals to establish a more equitable and environmentally responsible community.
Published by Andrew Mark
community, and place that arose from research with residents of Hornby Island, British
Columbia. I advance a theory of vibe that captures how Hornby Islanders understand the
role of musicking in their society and its importance for community solidarity, and I offer
practical examples of this theory in action. Throughout the article, I discuss the
relationship between Islanders’ ideas, Charles Keil’s theory of participatory discrepancies
and my conclusions.
what is practiced in North America and understood by thousands as “Shona music.”
This process produces a false narrative within North America of endangered and
scarce traditional Zimbabwean musical practices, and these ends serve neocolonial
imaginings of the need and right for white stewardship over and charity towards
traditional Zimbabwean music(ians). Such a history strikingly reflects dominant
and reductive North American settler conceptions of the wilderness, national
parks and Indigenous peoples as ecologically vulnerable and in need of protection.
Though this process has also fostered a worthy musical bond between Africans and
North Americans, it has come at the expense of unfettered economic, artistic and
political agency for Zimbabwean musicians and instrument builders who transact
their traditional musics internationally. Working towards an anti-oppressive, ethnographic, ecocritical and ecomusicological approach to interpreting the phenomenon of North American Zimbabwean music, this article addresses the proposal that North America could be an archive for scarce authentic traditional Zimbabwean musics.
Les institutions ethnomusicologiques transforment les musiques traditionnelles
du Zimbabwe en ce qui est pratiqué et reconnu par des milliers, en Amérique du
Nord, comme « Musique Shona ». Ce processus produit, en Amérique du Nord,
un récit erroné des pratiques musicales traditionnelles du Zimbabwe en voie de
disparition et nourrit l’imaginaire néocolonial sur le besoin et la légitimité d’une
intendance blanche et de charité envers les musiciens et les musiques traditionnelles
du Zimbabwe. Une telle histoire souligne les conceptions dominantes et
réductives associées à la mentalité coloniale en Amérique du Nord. Les espaces
naturels et sauvages, les parcs nationaux et les peuples autochtones sont considérés
comme étant écologiquement vulnérables et ayant besoin d’être protégés. Bien que
ce processus ait créé un lien musical louable entre Africains et Nord-Américains, il
s’est développé au détriment du libre-arbitre économique artistique et politique des musiciens et des luthiers zimbabwéens qui ouvrent leurs musiques traditionnelles
à l’international. En développant une approche anti-oppressive, ethnographique,
écocritique et écomusicologique pour interpréter le phénomène de la musique zimbabwéenne nord-américaine, cet article aborde la question de la constitution d’une
archive des musiques authentiques traditionnelles rares du Zimbabwe, en Amérique
du Nord.
Gnawa Diffusion was a successful musical group of first- and second-generation North African immigrants that achieved significant fame in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe during the last two decades. Based in France, though from Algeria, their politicized egalitarian message reached the world. Their musical skills, instrumentation, tastes and appeal to youth sounds, sentiments and meanings gave their globalized music a prominent place on the global stage. In their work Gnawa Diffusion addressed a panoply of political issues and sought to represent and reach their audience. Their greatest popularity came at the height and conclusion of the Algerian civil war. By parsing the meanings of the band’s name, this paper engages the events and cultures that informed Gnawa Diffusion, exploring the history of the Gnawa, the history of Algeria, and the relationships between France, North Africa and contemporary “French” music. Issues of cultural authenticity and representation are tightly layered within the band’s purposes and process of artistic production. Because Gnawa Diffusion was envisioned, organized and led by Amazigh Kateb Yassin, and because the band and media recognized him as the spokesperson and principal author for Gnawa Diffusion, Amazigh’s life story and words accompany this paper’s arguments and analysis. Through a selective sketch of the various musical consequences of the North African slave trade, the spread of Islam, the colonization of North Africa and the immigration of Algerians to France, we can begin to comprehend how these histories combined and harmonized through Gnawa Diffusion to form the new musical forms of a generation of people who seek to overcome their often divisive cultural heritage. In this case, the intent of the music challenges common notions of authenticity and thereby affirms it."
Forthcoming/In Review by Andrew Mark
Reviews by Andrew Mark
Podcasts by Andrew Mark
Photo: Andrew Mark, 2012
Photo: Andrew Mark, 2012
Featuring interviews with FES Professor Deborah Barndt, storyteller and FES contract faculty Chris Cavanagh, FES PhD candidate Heather McLean, and artist and FES PhD candidate Edie Steiner, we will discuss the ways ‘the arts’ reinforce common sense understandings of what constitutes ‘good art.’ We’ll also explore the problematic relationship between large art festivals and local arts movements and suggest ways in which critical environmental art practices can facilitate meaningful activism and create change.
environmental writing practice be a political act?
Based upon 10 months of fieldwork and 40 extended interviews, my theoretical assertions are grounded in immersive ethnographic research on Hornby Island, a 12-square-mile Gulf Island between mainland British Columbia and Vancouver Island, Canada. I describe how roughly 1000 Islanders struggle to achieve environmental resilience in a uniquely biodiverse region where fisheries collapsed, logging declined, and second-generation settler farms were replaced with vacation homes in the 20th century. Today, extreme gentrification complicates housing for the island’s vulnerable populations as more than half of island residents live below the poverty line. With demographics that reflect a median age of 62, young individuals, families, and children are squeezed out of the community, unable to reproduce Hornby’s alternative society.
This dissertation begins with theorization that connects music making to community and environmental thought. I then represent the challenges Islanders set for themselves and the struggles they face, like their desire for food sovereignty, off-grid energy, secure housing, protection of their aquifers, affordability of ferry transportation, ecological waste-cycles, and care for each other’s mental health. I bring attention to unique institutions that Islanders have created to better manage their needs and desires. In response to the island’s social and environmental dynamics of justice, I argue and demonstrate through ethnography that music making is an essential communal process that brings people together to dialogue about their needs and advance their goals to establish a more equitable and environmentally responsible community.
community, and place that arose from research with residents of Hornby Island, British
Columbia. I advance a theory of vibe that captures how Hornby Islanders understand the
role of musicking in their society and its importance for community solidarity, and I offer
practical examples of this theory in action. Throughout the article, I discuss the
relationship between Islanders’ ideas, Charles Keil’s theory of participatory discrepancies
and my conclusions.
what is practiced in North America and understood by thousands as “Shona music.”
This process produces a false narrative within North America of endangered and
scarce traditional Zimbabwean musical practices, and these ends serve neocolonial
imaginings of the need and right for white stewardship over and charity towards
traditional Zimbabwean music(ians). Such a history strikingly reflects dominant
and reductive North American settler conceptions of the wilderness, national
parks and Indigenous peoples as ecologically vulnerable and in need of protection.
Though this process has also fostered a worthy musical bond between Africans and
North Americans, it has come at the expense of unfettered economic, artistic and
political agency for Zimbabwean musicians and instrument builders who transact
their traditional musics internationally. Working towards an anti-oppressive, ethnographic, ecocritical and ecomusicological approach to interpreting the phenomenon of North American Zimbabwean music, this article addresses the proposal that North America could be an archive for scarce authentic traditional Zimbabwean musics.
Les institutions ethnomusicologiques transforment les musiques traditionnelles
du Zimbabwe en ce qui est pratiqué et reconnu par des milliers, en Amérique du
Nord, comme « Musique Shona ». Ce processus produit, en Amérique du Nord,
un récit erroné des pratiques musicales traditionnelles du Zimbabwe en voie de
disparition et nourrit l’imaginaire néocolonial sur le besoin et la légitimité d’une
intendance blanche et de charité envers les musiciens et les musiques traditionnelles
du Zimbabwe. Une telle histoire souligne les conceptions dominantes et
réductives associées à la mentalité coloniale en Amérique du Nord. Les espaces
naturels et sauvages, les parcs nationaux et les peuples autochtones sont considérés
comme étant écologiquement vulnérables et ayant besoin d’être protégés. Bien que
ce processus ait créé un lien musical louable entre Africains et Nord-Américains, il
s’est développé au détriment du libre-arbitre économique artistique et politique des musiciens et des luthiers zimbabwéens qui ouvrent leurs musiques traditionnelles
à l’international. En développant une approche anti-oppressive, ethnographique,
écocritique et écomusicologique pour interpréter le phénomène de la musique zimbabwéenne nord-américaine, cet article aborde la question de la constitution d’une
archive des musiques authentiques traditionnelles rares du Zimbabwe, en Amérique
du Nord.
Gnawa Diffusion was a successful musical group of first- and second-generation North African immigrants that achieved significant fame in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe during the last two decades. Based in France, though from Algeria, their politicized egalitarian message reached the world. Their musical skills, instrumentation, tastes and appeal to youth sounds, sentiments and meanings gave their globalized music a prominent place on the global stage. In their work Gnawa Diffusion addressed a panoply of political issues and sought to represent and reach their audience. Their greatest popularity came at the height and conclusion of the Algerian civil war. By parsing the meanings of the band’s name, this paper engages the events and cultures that informed Gnawa Diffusion, exploring the history of the Gnawa, the history of Algeria, and the relationships between France, North Africa and contemporary “French” music. Issues of cultural authenticity and representation are tightly layered within the band’s purposes and process of artistic production. Because Gnawa Diffusion was envisioned, organized and led by Amazigh Kateb Yassin, and because the band and media recognized him as the spokesperson and principal author for Gnawa Diffusion, Amazigh’s life story and words accompany this paper’s arguments and analysis. Through a selective sketch of the various musical consequences of the North African slave trade, the spread of Islam, the colonization of North Africa and the immigration of Algerians to France, we can begin to comprehend how these histories combined and harmonized through Gnawa Diffusion to form the new musical forms of a generation of people who seek to overcome their often divisive cultural heritage. In this case, the intent of the music challenges common notions of authenticity and thereby affirms it."
Photo: Andrew Mark, 2012
Photo: Andrew Mark, 2012
Featuring interviews with FES Professor Deborah Barndt, storyteller and FES contract faculty Chris Cavanagh, FES PhD candidate Heather McLean, and artist and FES PhD candidate Edie Steiner, we will discuss the ways ‘the arts’ reinforce common sense understandings of what constitutes ‘good art.’ We’ll also explore the problematic relationship between large art festivals and local arts movements and suggest ways in which critical environmental art practices can facilitate meaningful activism and create change.
environmental writing practice be a political act?
In this episode guest producer Sonja Killoran-McKibbin guides listeners through the G20 weekend by weaving together the stories of community organizers Yogi Acharya, Joanna Adamiak, and Catherine Ady-Bell. Yogi, Joanna, and Catherine each provide their personal experience in preparation for, during, and after the G20 in Toronto. Together, these stories challenge the mainstream media and Canadian government’s criminalization of community organizers and argue for the importance of acts of resistance in everyday life.