Singing & Sustainability

Singing & Sustainability:
An Ecological Perspective

By Mark Petty

In a 2000 wildland management plan–just as climate change was coming into the common consciousness–the US Forest Service defined sustainability as “the capacity of an area to provide the present generation with the needed direct, indirect, and spiritual benefits humans derive from ecosystems.”¹  Conservation biologists enlarge this to include benefits for all organisms, and that “the current generation of humans will leave an equitable share of resources for future generations.”²  It is an environmental goal to foster healthy, balanced, and self-sustaining ecosystems that thrive on communal sharing.  Sustainable conservation, it seems, has more in common with choirs than meets the eye. 

One of the most important factors driving ecological welfare is the concept of keystone species: organisms that disproportionately affect and steer overall community health, often with surprisingly small population ratios.  Where I’m based in the Interior Northwest, wild salmon are a major food source for orca, eagles, and bears, and have been the lifeblood of indigenous tribes along the Columbia and Snake Rivers for thousands of years.  Annual migrations lead the salmon from the Pacific Ocean upstream to legacy spawning grounds, where they eventually lay their eggs and give their lives to feed the next generations.  Cascading down trophic levels, insects hatch in the carcasses and go on to pollinate the forests and grasslands, while the bones are absorbed back into the soil, ceding vital nutrients in the cycle.³

Ursus arctos in Alaska. Photograph by Christoph Strässler, 2013. 

Across the Snake River Plain in the Rockies is perhaps the finest example of a keystone species at work, when grey wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone in 1995.  In the decades following wolf eradication in the early 20th century, local elk populations exploded leading to massive overgrazing.  Riverbanks eroded away into cloudy streams, and without adequate cover mouse and rabbit populations dwindled, bears declined for lack of berries, and songbirds lost their shelter.  The Yellowstone ecosystem was stripped of healthy biodiversity and flagged in unsustainable imbalance.  Within just a handful of years of bringing the wolves back to the land, however, the elk population dropped from roughly 17,000 to 4,000; shrubs and wildflowers returned, strengthening river edges and purifying waters for fish and beavers.  Pollinators and small animals flourished, while the bears ate their fill and birdsongs filled the air again from increased nesting.⁴

Given the current climate of society and our communities, growing division and alarm, and what feels like scant compassion, I would argue that choirs are a keystone species for our culture.  Where we may experience a human ecosystem out of balance and in distress, singers uniting in harmony toward empathy, care, and beauty can restore and sustain our hearts in the same way the salmon nourish the waters and wolves shape the land.  Choirs are a driver of overall societal health–where there are songs there is understanding, there are stories, there is excellence, peace, and hope.  Choirs promote an ecology of sharing, not taking–a timeworn hallmark of robust and sustainable ecosystems across generations.

In Iceland, a country marked by wild glacial landscapes and a sparsely distributed people, every city and hamlet has a choir.  Traditionally, communities would gather during the long winter nights to sing together and tell stories through ancient rímur chants.  With only four hours of sunlight during the solstice peak, singing was as much about survival as it was for sociality. Modern-day ensembles enjoy a rich heritage of belonging through choral unity, thriving in a community of gifted and brilliant artists.  These keystone choirs knit their culture together, much like the threads of their lovely lopapeysa⁵ over generations and time.

The author in Hornstrandir, Iceland overlooking Veiðileysufjörður. Self portrait, 2022.

We are all well aware by now of the measurable and tangible benefits of singing and overall music making; there is enough scientific research and documentation to support our plight.  But how wonderful that the Forest Service chose to retain the “spiritual benefits” we receive from ecosystems in their definition of sustainability.  As a keystone component of our communities, choirs provide for spiritual depth, process, and healing.  That aspect of choral wonder that matches the joy of a sunrise, awe at the stars, and soft winds rustling the trees heightens our culture and lifts our souls. 

What is ecological sustainability, if not simply all parts of a community working together for the greater good of the whole?  What is a choir, if not the same?  The work we do, the songs we share, the beauty we create, they are all drivers of a musical ecology that sustains us now and across generations.

¹ Curt Flather, et al., Ecological Sustainability, USDA Forest Service, c. 2000, 1. 

² Ibid.

³ See Chad Hamill’s essay “Coyote Made the Rivers” for a wonderful introspection on the intersection of indigenous song, salmon runs, and colonial industrial obstruction in Sounds, Ecologies, Musics, ed. by Aaron S. Allen and Jeff Todd Tinton, Oxford University Press, NY, 2023, 133-152.

⁴ Wolves of Yellowstone, PBS, ksps.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/a58e3ca2-52ab-45f5-87ac-26ee0d681146/wolves-of-yellowstone-earth-a-new-wild/?student=true

⁵ Lopapeysa – the distinctive Icelandic sweater handmade from local sheep’s wool