Along with the human voice, percussion is probably the oldest instrument family to exist, known to have been around for at least 8,000 years, according to James Blades1. Furthermore, since ancient times, percussion instruments have been inherently connected to the natural world. For example, the Yaqui people of the Southwest United States use water drums called baa wehai, commonly played in their sacred deer dance2. This dance demonstrates their belief in an essential connection between humans and the environment, through the utilization of natural resources as instruments - gourds, in this case - and in the dance's relation to the hunting of deer for its resources (ibid).
'Yaqui Deer Dancer' by Tazouz, 2014
These instruments are not exclusive to the Yaqui people though; similar drums are used by the Iroquois, Navajo, Apache, and Cherokee3 people among many others across the Americas, with use in ritual and dance much like the Yaqui's. Across the globe, similar versions of water drums are seen in the Bayaka people in Africa as well. In place of a drum, they sometimes use the water itself and their hands and arms to create different sounds.4 These practices integrate their music with the environment, whether directly through the resources used to make the instruments or by using the environment as its own instrument. Taking note of the similarity and possible transmission5 of instruments or ideas is an important aspect to consider, as it means what classical musicians use today might also come from the transmission of an idea, creating a lineage of reused ideas resulting in what we use today.
For example, the marimba can be seen in Latin American traditions of Colombia, Ecuador, and the South Pacific region, and is an integral part of their culture, reinforced by UNESCO's declaration of the marimba and their songs as a part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity List in 20156. However, the marimba is known to have come to Latin America and South America from the African diaspora due to the slave trade in the 16th and 17th centuries (Bogota et al., para.7). The construction eventually transformed into what modern percussionists know as the marimba, exchanging gourd resonators with wooden tubes, like what is used on the timbila from the Chopi people of Mozambique7. while different in construction and traditional usage, the method of performance is markedly similar.
While these examples of indigenous nations of the Americas demonstrate the different relationships percussion has to humans, modern-day percussionists, and artists have indeed found ways to resignal the significance of items from everyday life into the concert hall. One notable example comes from two young Norwegian girls, Anna & Emma, who recorded a song about climate change and how humans need to take responsibility for it, called "Earth is Sick" (Kloden er syk) 10. Using oil drums in their music video, these two young girls take a well-known object, and transform it into a percussion instrument, while also forcing viewers to connect their message of taking accountability for climate change to the association an oil drum has for many people - oil companies, gasoline, drilling, climate change, etc. The lyrics during this moment "we can change the world we live in" demonstrate the possibility for alternative uses of items, businesses, or art even. Judith Butler, in her book "Undoing Gender", describes a theory of resignification (Butler 2004, p.223) as a possible political tool. This idea involves taking pre-existing terminology, objects, or ideas, and recontextualizing them. For example, appropriating racist language in rap and hip-hop, where it is acceptable and empowering for a marginalized group, demonstrates one form of resignification, but it is not limited to the transformation of something negative to positive. Butler even states, "One can argue that the Nazis appropriated power by taking the language and concerns of democracy against itself..." (ibid).
Taking this theory of resignification into musical practice could offer a new way to promote environmentalism. Turning junk and recycled items into musical instruments, not solely as gimmicks but as a way to send a message that items are more than their intended use - the utilization of a plastic jug meant for gasoline as an instrument sends a message more than just sounding interesting. If contextualized, the jug's intended use could be ironic if the piece it is used in focuses on the degradation of plastics over time in a musical form. Creating tambourine jingles out of bottle caps, Turning plastic bottles into tuned idiophones, or developing mycelium-based leather or mango-rind skins for drumheads, all could be possible alternatives to reusing products that either provide sustainable alternatives or reutilize a single-use product that originally was never intended to become a musical instrument.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary14, greenwashing is defined as "behavior or activities that make people believe that a company is doing more to protect the environment than it actually is." Through this practice, companies are able to promote products or behavior that actively benefits them, almost exclusively financially, by making the consumer choose instead of the company making changes. The term originally came from the 1980s, when Jay Westerveld, an environmentalist, stayed at a hotel that asked occupants to reuse their towels to save the environment when in reality it was only to reduce the hotel laundry costs (“The History of Greenwashing and Its Modern Evolution,” para.2). These practices force consumers to make the choice to be more environmental with their buying habits, despite oftentimes the products labeled as "natural" or "eco-friendly" are no different from the "non-natural" counterpart. In fact, the word "natural" is still not a regulated term in product development ("Are 'natural' products better than synthetic ones?", para.19), making consumer decisions increasingly more difficult as corporations cash in on the buzzwords. How is a consumer expected to know what is the best product and ingredient list for every item they wish to buy? Companies that genuinely create environmentally conscientious products are placed in a position to spend more to prove they are with official third-party certifications, which help to cut through the greenwashing of the product-saturated industries (ibid). As a result, well-intentioned consumers make purchasing habits that do not improve the environment at all or may even support businesses that actively harm the environment (“The History of Greenwashing and Its Modern Evolution,” para.2). Consumers should not be the sole party responsible for making positive environmental decisions, as the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development15 states, corporate responsibility includes environmental, workplace, marketplace, and community responsibilities, which the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development16 hopes to improve (United Nations, pg. 2). The CIPD says by doing right by a company's shareholders and sharing the same values as its consumers, brand enhancement occurs, causing positive reputation and employee engagement, so "it therefore makes good business sense to operate sustainably" (ibid).
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