Global Harmony: A Musical Inquiry

By Safina Center Environmental History and Music Fellow Priya Parrotta

©Daniel Olah, via Unsplash

Of all the soundscapes in the world, the most beautiful and elusive to me is that of global harmony.

Like many people in our globalized world, my life has been lived at the intersection of multiple cultures, worldviews and ecosystems. And while this is not the case in all cosmopolitan households, in mine the connections between biological and cultural diversity were frequently affirmed. From a young age I found myself profoundly attracted to the world’s environmental philosophies: spiritual systems such as Yoga and Sufism and Taoism, which celebrate the possibility of harmony between humans and the natural world. From this, I have developed a visceral feeling that ecological and cultural diversity are linked. And I believe that true planetary consciousness requires us to undertand how living with each other, and living with the Earth, ultimately rely upon the same sensitivities, intelligences and values.

Musically, I tend to experience multiculturalism as a patchwork rather than a totally cohesive landscape—or rather, soundscape. Though my own voice first came alive when I began singing the repertoire of singers like Whitney Houston, Céline Dion, and Aretha Franklin, other genres from around the world have also indelibly become a part of my original music. There are very few regions of the world whose traditional, popular and sacred music has not been a part of my life. On any given day, the playlists I listen to include songs from countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Jamaica, Mali, Senegal, Ireland, Spain, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, India, Tibet, and Mongolia. And over time, I have come to understand how genres from each of these places adds something to our understanding of living together.

The academic discipline of ethnomusicology is an enormous help in learning about the connections between musical practices and social coexistence. Scholars within this field explore the ways in which music is not simply something we listen to: It is also one of the most important determinants of the societies in which we live. Ethnomusicologists study the ways in which music is created, performed, and otherwise experienced within diverse social and cultural contexts. And as somebody who seeks to create music that, in different ways, brings the more-than-human world into the human public sphere, encountering this scholarship some years ago set my world alight.

Both from study and from experience, we know that music helps to foster community and solidarity between humans. And indeed, part of the reason for the upsetting disintegration of social ties which we have seen these past decades is the failure of commercial music to deeply and truly affirm our shared humanity. But in addition to this, there is something else which I find disconcerting about so much of the music we listen to today, regardless of where in the world we are located. And that is the fact that, in its lyrics and arrangements and performance, it does not connect us to the more-than-human world.

There are multiple reasons for this. The deep divide between environmental consciousness and most popular music has its roots in (to list a few factors) the colonial dismissal of environmental music in traditional and Indigenous societies around the world; in the logic of profit that drives commercial music; and, just as significantly, in our collective fascination with fame and celebrity, which leads us to construct superstars and dismiss birdsong.

Yet if the history of diverse styles of world music teaches us anything, it is that music has always had the power to orient us in time and space. And in these times, I believe that we need a profound re-orientation. We need to step away from our screens, let go of ideas about humanity which erroneously place us above the more-than-human world, and generally remember that we belong to an immense biosphere which requires our humility and our respect. And if music is both a reflection and an agent of how we see ourselves, we need more music which reminds us of our small but sacred place within the tapestry of life on Earth.

My musical practice is driven by that challenge and that hope. Emboldened by the work of people with deep knowledge about the connections between the evolution of music and the evolution of culture, I seek to create music which affirms harmonious relationships with plants and nonhuman animals. I work with the innate characteristics of diverse genres of human music, harnessing the unique power of each to tell the stories and convey the messages which we need to hear in a time of profound environmental crisis. I seek to bring the magic of music, refined in different ways by different societies over the course of countless generations, to the service of diverse branches of the environmental movement—for ecological consciousness is a need and a process which must encompass the entire globe.

Given that my motivation for doing this is to move us away from the divisions and hubris of our times, I strive to make this as decolonial and non-commercial as possible. These choices help keep me close to what the purpose of music has been for so many people across the vast landscape of human history. I believe that music, when properly done, helps us come into holistic, psychospiritual integration with the world as we wish it could be. And in my case, that wish can only be described as global harmony.