This ethnographic research traces musical responses to an extractivist megaproject. It focuses on the cultural aftermath of the rerouting of the Rio São Francisco in Northeast Brazil in the 1970s-1980s, creating what at the time was the largest artificial lake in the world. The Brazilian dictatorship built dams submerging multiple interior Pernambucan and Bahian towns, forcing over 60,000 people to relocate. The flooding and forced relocation led to several musical responses decrying and denying the event. In 1979, celebrated percussionist Naná Vasconcelos recorded “Ondas,” a shattering, percussion-driven instrumental track that surrounds the listener as if they were in a small town church witnessing the inexorable rise of the water. In 2021, EDM DJ Bhaskar anchored a pontoon boat in front of a submerged church in the center of the artificial lake near Petrolandia and filmed a set synched with the sunset. These contrasting musical responses of 1970s protest music and the 2020s DJ set serve as bookends tracing the long tail of this megaproject’s fallout. Based on interviews with relocated residents, this presentation explores the generational divide between mournful and critical responses like that of a teacher who walked through what was left of his hometown when the water receded, and the ecstatic panorama of DJ Bhaskar placing Petrolandia on the map as a destination for visitors. This work stands at the intersection of music, nostalgia, heritage, ruins, and cultural tourism.

"Flowing Water" (Liu Shui) is one of the most iconic and enduring pieces in the ancient guqin repertoire. It encapsulates the distinctly Chinese perception of nature, reflecting an idealized harmony between humanity and the natural world while embodying a profound cultural legacy in human relationships that has resonated throughout East Asia for centuries. This presentation offers an immersive auditory experience, featuring a live performance by the presenter, providing deeper insight into how this ancient musical tradition conveys ecological awareness, philosophical reflection, and the transmission of cultural knowledge.

After the live performance, a case study of a guqin cultural site in southern China will critically examine how these cultural ideals are reinterpreted within sociocultural and economic contexts by exploring spatial design, cultural heritage practices, environmental awareness, and evolving lifestyles in the 21st century.

This paper contributes to the expanding ecomusicological discourse on non-Euro-American perspectives of the natural world by exploring how these worldviews are articulated through musical instruments, thematic compositions, and indigenous knowledge systems. Additionally, it examines the role of guqin music in promoting sustainability and cultural resilience, offering a nuanced understanding of traditional ecological wisdom within the context of contemporary environmental challenges.

Nsadwase Music Festival stems from “Nsadwase” – a portmanteau of Akan words “nsa”(alcoholic drink) and “edwaase” (gathering)––an Akan traditional gathering of elders under a tree to drink palm wine, make music, and discuss societal issues. The Festival is an annual music celebration of palmwine music tradition initiated and organized by the Legon Palmwine Band. The festival was started in 2017 as part of an applied ethnomusicological research to revitalize palmwine music tradition: one of the oldest music traditions from Ghana. Until this intervention, the music tradition was moribund partly due to the unavailability of musicians. Since its inception, the festival has become a space for learning about the music tradition; thus, several palmwine musicians have emerged from the gathering. Moreso, in response to the ecological crises in Ghana, the festival has adopted an eco-friendly paradigm and incorporates ecological issues as a part of the celebration. This paper investigates the festival's usefulness in nurturing cultural traditions while advocating for environmental responsibility. It also discusses the symbiotic relationship between musical revitalization and ecological sustainability. Overall, we argue that the Nsadwase Music Festival is a space that illustrates how cultural initiatives can bring vitality into declining traditions and catalyze environmental awareness. This paper contributes to the broader discourse on the convergence of tradition and sustainable practices within the context of music festivals.

In this paper, I draw attention towards problematic sonic assumptions of the urban garden – a presumed space of “silent refuge” amidst a detrimentally loud human soundscape. Drawing from existing garden historiographies (Martinez 2010, Strombeck 2020, Schrader 2020) as well as hands-on fieldwork, I take a single neighborhood, the Lower East Side in New York City, as a case study through which to understand the sonic footprint of greenspace within this urban soundscape, an element which has remained absent in previous sound studies scholarship (Thompson 2003, LaBelle 2010). In particular, I examine the activities of local “artivist” organization Earth Celebrations, founded by artist Felicia Young. For over thirty years, Young has organized large-scale annual theatrical processions replete with live musical performances, poetry readings, skits, and elaborate costumes and massive papier-mâché puppets, beginning with the original “Procession to Save Our Gardens” event in 1991. Through my own participation in their now more widespread 2025 “Ecological City” event, I trace how Earth Celebrations has used audible spectacle-building as a key strategy for protecting greenspaces, thus demonstrating how sound has left deep affective resonances within the garden environment. In constructing this apparent symbiosis between urban gardens and noise-making, I draw attention towards the central role that gardens play not only in the ecological makeup of the modern city, but in the sociocultural and musical makeup as well. Additionally, by reconstructing the garden as a necessarily “noisy” space, I imagine what it might mean to understand a garden as a sounding body unto itself.