Towards Ecological Musicking

Explores an improvisational musical practice that is rooted in ecology and orients auditory perception and expression alike to non-human elements, like animals, energies, and place, that are integral to the practice.

Towards Ecological Musicking proposes an improvisational practice dubbed "As Weather." As Weather improvisation is a way of worlding where one reconfigures relationships within ecological systems. In this book, as Weather is positioned as a method for ecologizing music-making processes in contemporary social, cultural and climate contexts. Exploring if and how non-human animals as well as energies, elements and places can be co-creative musical partners, and what is forfeited or gained by accepting natural improvisationality, new knowledge of place is then gained through as Weather musicking.

Highlighting the double standard placed on Indigenous scholars and musicians who inevitably provide details of their positionality and reifying the importance of place to this text, scholars and artists referenced in this volume are emplaced and cultured as they are integrated into the textual and musical analyses. Contemporary audio technology and primordial processes - in the sense that the sonic universe is eternal - are deployed in combination to demonstrate that humans have been moving and grooving with and as Weather over eons.