MEGAN THEE STALLION
AS CLIMATE ANXIETY WORSENED AND WORLD LEADERS IGNORED MOUNTING PLEAS from scientists, the climate emergency defined the way we looked at the world.
DANCING TO CLIMATE- FOCUSED MUSIC
Jayda G’s Significant Changes threaded messaging about orca pods into the vocabulary of dance floor politics; Matmos addressed our relationship with plastic on Plastic Anni
versary; and electroacoustic musicians Koenraad Ecker and Frederik Meulyzer emerged from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in rapidly warming Norway with field recordings that informed new album Carbon.
GRETA THUNBERG
Swedish 16-year-old Greta Thunberg’s speech at the UN Climate Action Summit raked world leaders over the coals, and musicians took notice. Suaka drummer John “Mollusk” Meredith sourced her speech for a song in the style of Swedish death metal. South African producer David Scott mashed up the speech with Fatboy Slim’s classic “Right Here, Right Now,” which Slim played live in Gateshead, UK. Artists like Thom Yorke, David Byrne and Brian Eno called for systemic change in an open letter published through Extinction Rebellion: “We live high carbon lives and the industries that we are part of have huge carbon footprints. We are stuck in this fossil-fuel economy and without systemic change, our lifestyles will keep on causing climate and ecological harm.”
MEDIA MEDITATIONS
Manufacturers grappled with the sustainability of vinyl; some pursued vinyl made from recycled ocean plastics and plasticless alternatives. Some listeners embraced digital-only listening habits as a green alternative, but that’s not so simple. According to a joint study from the Universities of Glasgow and Oslo, greenhouse gases produced by storing and processing music for online streaming can be far greater than the equivalents generated in producing physical media.
TRAVEL
Olof Dreijer (the Knife) spoke about his hesitance to tour, proposing a “Skype club,” while others explored options like carbon offsetting, accessing carbon calculators like the UN-approved Climate Neutral Now. Guelph’s Hillside Festival pursued carbon offsets to account for attendees’ transportation emissions, effectively balancing their output to become carbon neutral.