Ecomusicology Cannot Stop at Writing Songs About Climate Change

Environmental music is often easiest to recognise when it announces itself.

A composition contains recordings of melting ice. An album discusses climate anxiety. A performer gives a speech about the planet. A festival books an environmental panel.

These practices have value, but they create a risk: environmentalism becomes another subject that music can represent while the structures producing the music remain unchanged.

That is where ecomusicology becomes more interesting.

At its broadest, ecomusicology asks how music, sound, culture and environmental systems relate to one another. Recent scholarship has argued that despite increasing interest in climate change within music studies, environmental questions often remain peripheral rather than changing how musical life itself is understood. Fabian Holt’s 2025 chapter on music and the climate crisis argues that musicians regularly produce climate songs and support campaigns, yet the Anthropocene has not necessarily become central to everyday musical culture.¹

I think this diagnosis is persuasive.

It is possible to perform a climate themed concert whose audience arrives almost entirely by private car.

It is possible to release an environmental album in multiple collectible physical variants.

It is possible to compose beautifully about forests without knowing where an instrument’s timber originated.

The point is not to expose hypocrisy. Nobody operates outside environmental systems.

The more productive question is whether ecological thinking can influence the infrastructure of music as much as its content.

A 2026 paper on music and environmental governance pushes the discussion further by considering music and sound not only as tools of awareness, but as part of interdisciplinary environmental practice involving artists, researchers, communities and institutions.²

That direction interests me because awareness has become an insufficient goal.

Most people already know climate change exists. A concert that simply tells an audience to "care about the planet" may leave everyone agreeing without changing anything.

Art can do more complicated work.

It can make environmental change emotionally perceptible. It can preserve knowledge embedded in local soundscapes. It can create public gatherings around ecological questions. Musicians can also influence touring systems, material choices, institutional procurement and the expectations of audiences.

This broader view also prevents ecomusicology from becoming aesthetically narrow.

Environmental music does not need birdsong.

It does not need an acoustic instrument.

It does not need to be peaceful.

A piece about an industrial port, an air conditioner, urban traffic or electronic waste may reveal environmental relationships just as powerfully as a composition about a forest.

The environmental question is not whether the music sounds natural.

It is what relationships the music helps us notice.

For me, the future of ecomusicology lies in connecting three scales that are too often separated: what music represents, how music is produced, and what communities music creates.

A climate song may still matter.

But the more difficult work begins after the song ends.

Who travelled to hear it?

What materials produced it?

Who had access to the event?

What happens because people gathered?

Those questions make music less comfortable.

They also make environmental music much more interesting.