https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7297-5128
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ABSTRACT
In recent years, Scottish folk musicians have increasingly referenced and incorporated Scottish topography, place and wildlife within their music, often positioning humans as inseparable from a wider natural-cultural ecosystem. This ‘ecological thinking’ both reflects and shapes issues of locality and place in Scottish music; tropes of (Scottish) folk music as ‘close to nature’ are variously demarcated or blurred in such thinking. In addition, these folk musicians use their music to present a critical perspective on explicitly environmental and political issues, addressing in particular the historical and current relationships between ‘humans’ and ‘nature’. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with musicians and musical analysis, this article explores how two case study albums negotiate place, mythology and embedded human-nonhuman dyads with reference to the natural world. I argue that an ethics of solidarity and care underpins these musicians’ output, exploring how music can enable a reflexive and often contradictory form of ecological thinking.
Acknowledgements
This article was supported in part by the Dunlevie King’s Hall Studentship, awarded by Trinity College, Cambridge. Many thanks must go to Matthew Machin-Autenrieth, who helped to formulate many initial ideas and offered much advice and feedback on later versions. I am grateful also to Ross Cole and Paul Newton-Jackson for their feedback and continued guidance and to two anonymous reviewers for their excellent editorial suggestions. I thank Andy Bell at Hudson Records for his kind permission to reproduce the images and song lyrics within this article. Finally, thank you to all my participants, who offered invaluable discussions and gave permission for their words and work to be included here: Andrew Lamb, Pippa Murphy, Karine Polwart, Jenny Sturgeon and Inge Thomson.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on the contributor
Rowan Bayliss Hawitt is a PhD candidate in Music at the University of Edinburgh, currently researching the intersection of human and more-than-human temporalities in British contemporary folk music at the point of a climate crisis. She received a BA(Hons) in Music from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and an MPhil in Music from Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 2019 with the William Barclay Squire Essay Prize.
Notes
1 The entire work, which premiered at Celtic Connections in Glasgow on 18th January 2020, may be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtRuqa7Csos.
2 While unable to secure an interview with Polwart, I draw on other primary sources such as blog posts and podcasts to corroborate her views.
3 The work of, for instance, ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood (Citation1993) demonstrates how the dualisms inscribed in gender and class intersect with the human/nature binary.
5 Take, for example, Walter Scott’s Waverley novels, which cemented aestheticised symbols of Scottishness; these persist today in franchises such as TV series Outlander.
6 Words from participants will be cited the first time they are quoted; all further quotes are from the same interviews.
7 This and all further quotes from Polwart are from a 2016 podcast, which may be accessed here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1817472408286760.
8 This form of selective memory is characteristic of Shifting Baseline Syndrome, which ‘describes a gradual change in the accepted norms for the condition of the natural environment’ (Soga and Gaston Citation2018:222).
9 See Nichola Wood (Citation2012) for a discussion of how ‘Scottishness’ is articulated in music beyond sonic icons.
10 Roseanna Cunningham, Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform in Holyrood, warned that UK Government policies could inhibit Scotland meeting its climate change targets (Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee Official Report, 21/05/19).
11 This is particularly evident in the context of land ownership reform in Scotland: The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 sought to increase community rather than private ownership of land and further sustainable development.
12 Polwart’s position on independence is documented on her blog: https://karinepolwart.com/articles-interviews/blog/the-scotsman-article-imagination-vital-to-telling-the-yes-story (accessed 30/05/19).
13 https://www.bto.org/sites/default/files/shared_documents/publications/birds-conservation-concern/birds-of-conservation-concern-4-leaflet.pdf (accessed 19/02/21).
14 2016 podcast: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1817472408286760.
15 It will be evident by this point that issues of audience reception are not my primary focus – that remains an avenue for future work.
16 It is worth noting that Titon (Citation2020) has recently emphasised a ‘sound ecology’ that is more rooted in unpredictable relationality than constant equilibrium.
17 Much ecomusicological work in non-Western contexts, however, provides excellent examples of how conflicts arise and are addressed in musical human-nonhuman ‘ecosystems’ (e.g. Diettrich Citation2018, Dirksen Citation2018).