Environmental Education Research

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Music as a tool for environmental education and

advocacy: artistic perspectives from musicians of
the Playlist for the Planet

Jennifer L. Publicover, Tarah S. Wright, Steven Baur & Peter N. Duinker

To cite this article: Jennifer L. Publicover, Tarah S. Wright, Steven Baur & Peter N. Duinker
(2018) Music as a tool for environmental education and advocacy: artistic perspectives from
musicians of the Playlist�for�the�Planet , Environmental Education Research, 24:7, 925-936, DOI:
10.1080/13504622.2017.1365356

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Published online: 11 Aug 2017.

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EnvironmEntAl Education rEsEarch, 2018
VOL. 24, NO. 07, 925–936
https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2017.1365356

Music as a tool for environmental education and advocacy:

artistic perspectives from musicians of the Playlist for the Planet
Jennifer L. Publicovera  , Tarah S. Wrightb, Steven Baurc and Peter N. Duinkera
a
Faculty of Management, School for Resource and Environmental Studies, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada;
b
Environmental Science, Faculty of Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada; cFountain School of Performing
Arts, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Environmental education is a key tool in humanity’s efforts to address Received 30 September 2016
environmental issues. The arts can help provide some of the affective Accepted 31 July 2017
components of environmental education – emotions, values, and motivations
KEYWORDS
driving pro-environmental behavior. As one of the arts, music can captivate, Music; environmental
entertain, and create a sense of community. Using non-probabilistic purposive education; ecomusicology;
sampling, we interviewed a cohort of environmentally aware musicians with environmental
the goal of understanding their mental constructions around the role of communication;
music in environmental education and advocacy. A constant comparative environmental advocacy
coding method was used to code the interviews. The analysis revealed four
artistic and five quality dimensions that the participants considered when
sharing their pro-environmental values through their music. The four artistic
dimensions emerged as continua representing ranges of choice regarding
how a musician might create and deliver an environment-related song. The
five quality dimensions emerged as recommendations for effectiveness of
messaging through art that is perceived as authentic.

1. Introduction
Environmental education (EE) is seen as a means of tackling humanity’s environmental crisis by
providing citizens with the knowledge, understanding, values, and skills needed to find and adopt
ways to live more harmoniously with the environment (UNESCO-UNEP 1978). EE scholars recognize
that their field extends beyond the relay of factual knowledge into helping learners develop pro-
environmental values (Jickling et al. 2010). Environmental educators are tasked not only with impart-
ing information on the state of the environment and on what pro-environmental actions to undertake,
but also with helping diverse learners in myriad contexts to find for themselves a sense of value for
our global ecosystem, so that they are motivated and empowered to use their knowledge and skills
of their own accord.
One may not immediately think of the role that the arts can play in EE. Yet, people frequently use
the arts, in many diverse settings, to explore emotions and build values on a wide range of life issues,
including environmental ones: ‘… Art, culture and education have direct connections with the val-
ues that we hold in society and with quality of life’ (Packalén 2010, 121). The arts have the power to
evoke emotion, spark dialog, encourage innovative thinking, present diverse perspectives, cope with
ambiguity and non-linearity, and influence the development of cultural norms (Eernstman et al. 2012;
Eernstman and Wals 2013).

CONTACT  Jennifer L. Publicover  jlpublic@dal.ca

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
926 J. L. PUBLICOVER ET AL.

Music is among the possible artistic media that can be used in EE. Kagan and Kirchberg (2016) state
that there is presently a lack of sustainability literature focused on music. Within environmental edu-
cation literature, our thorough search of databases (including a search of scholarly, professional, and
gray literature) revealed relatively few manuscripts discussing the role of music as an environmental
education and communication tool. In examining the small body of existing scholarly literature that
we did find, we identified a number of potential avenues for new research. In this paper we have
pursued one of those avenues by asking how, when, where, and why professional musicians and envi-
ronmental educators might enlist music to help elicit pro-environmental thoughts and actions in their
audiences and networks. We did so by interviewing a cohort of musicians who had created popular,
environmentally themed music and advocated for environmental issues themselves, and by analyzing
their responses to our interview questions in a grounded inductive framework. We approached this
study from a constructivist worldview with the goal of understanding musicians’ constructions around
the role of music in environmental education and advocacy. This approach placed observation in the
primary position with the intention to contemplate a theory to account for what was observed. The
objectives of the research were both exploratory (formulative) and transformational, to gain familiarity
with an under-researched area and also to effect social change. As communication is seen as a vector
for social change in the sustainability movement (Oepen and Hamacher 2000), this research can serve
as an important channel for advancing discussions and initiatives around music and EE.
This document focuses on the music itself; our companion paper (Publicover et al. submitted)
explores the career parameters of these musicians as they pursue authenticity, model their environ-
mental ideals, and negotiate the challenges, risks, and rewards associated with such engagement in
their professional lives.

2. Background
The working definition of EE used in this study is Pavlova’s (2013) summary from UNESCO-UNEP:
Environmental Education (EE) is the educational process that deals with the human interrelationships with the
environment and that utilizes an interdisciplinary problem solving approach with value clarification. It is concerned
with education progress of knowledge, understanding, attitudes, skills and commitment for environmental prob-
lems and considerations. (UNESCO-UNEP 1983, summarized in Pavlova 2013, 656)
Through the 1980s to the present, the term ‘education for sustainable development’ (ESD) has appeared
in environmental discourse at the United Nations and in other forums, sometimes – but not always –
interchangeably with EE, with overlapping content and methods (Pavlova 2013). Pavlova (Ibid., 666)
states that EE and ESD both share
… an emphasis on life-long learning and inclusion of formal and non-formal education; interdisciplinarity; inclu-
sion of social, environmental, and economic realms; and use of a variety of pedagogical techniques that promote
participatory learning, first-hand learning and development of higher order thinking skills.
In UN documents, ESD tends to emphasize people, their localities, and wider social issues, whereas EE
tends to focus more on the environment and its improvement. This distinction has not always been
made consistently in the literature, however, and some jurisdictions have retained their preferred term
for particular practices and/or questioned the need for a conceptual shift at all (Pavlova 2013). For the
purposes of this study, the term EE is used with the understanding that it is an essential component
of the wider term ESD.
Research indicates that merely increasing knowledge about environmental issues does not on its own
correlate with increased pro-environmental behavior (Tilbury 1997; Pooley and O’Connor 2000; Jurin and
Fortner 2002; Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002; McKenzie-Mohr 2011). To motivate learners towards more
pro-environmental behaviors, EE scholars such as Tilbury (1997), Orr ([1994] 2004), Jensen (2002), and
Pooley and O’Connor (2000) recommend a mix of pedagogical approaches. Alongside the straightfor-
ward cognitive relay of information about the environment, they also recognize affective, emotion-based
learning. Learners must care about the issues if they are to be expected to act pro-environmentally.
 ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION RESEARCH 927

Processing emotions and building values are strengths of the arts (Carruthers 2006; Packalén 2010;
Eernstman and Wals 2013). Jacobson, Mcduff, and Monroe (2007) state that adding an emotional com-
ponent to learning experiences can help learners attach more importance to them, making them more
exciting and memorable. Their research on conservation education suggests that more diverse audi-
ences can be reached with the aid of artistic approaches.
The arts can embrace the theme of sustainability such that it does not become entrenched and stale
with time but remains fresh and relevant (Eernstman and Wals 2013). ‘Fuzziness’ refers to anything that
defies precise and total description, either because its exact boundaries are undetermined, or because
its content and value change when applied to different contexts (Zadeh 1965). Rather than embracing
an absolute conceptualization of sustainability that does not translate across time, location, and cir-
cumstance, Eernstman and Wals (2013) encourage us to adopt a fuzzy conceptualization that allows
it to mean what people need it to mean in different contexts. For example, the lived experiences of
one person drawing water in a drought-stricken region might be quite different than those of another
individual on the other side of the globe facing flooding and property loss, yet both situations may
relate to climate change. Moreover, since few issues are black and white, or ‘bivalent,’ Eernstman and
Wals encourage us to allow for shades of gray, i.e. ‘multivalence.’ The arts are well placed to handle
fuzziness and multivalence, open-endedly presenting multiple realities without necessarily having to
resolve them with each other (Eernstman and Wals 2013).
The arts, including music, can engage learners in diverse formal, nonformal, informal (Coombs and
Ahmed 1974; La Belle 1982), and self-directed (Mocker and Spear 1982) settings, all of which can over-
lap. A concert presentation in a school may be an example of a formal setting; a song circle in a Scout
troupe or community group could represent a nonformal setting; informal learning can occur in any
social setting where music and people mix; and self-direction can occur when an individual takes the
time to dig a little deeper into the work of an artist s/he admires and uncovers environmental themes.
Additionally, engaging in the experiences and thoughts of others through the arts can also constitute
a form of experiential learning (Kolb 1984).
While music without text shares some overlapping processing mechanisms with conventional lan-
guage, it lacks specific and literal semantic content (Patel 2008). It is therefore not the most efficient
vehicle for delivering straightforward information. However, within its structures lies a wordless drama
that is frequently harnessed to enhance and draw attention to lyrics and other extra-musical elements.
Musical elements such as pitch, rhythm, timbre, tessitura, volume, harmony, tempo, the mix of familiar
versus novel material, patterns, etc. can set up tension-and-release expectations, and either resolve
them or send them into some unanticipated direction. Some of these expectations can be exploited
by moving away from and then reaffirming a tonal center (a ‘home base’), as well as with consonance
and dissonance (Levitin 2007; Benward and Saker 2014).
It does not follow that some magical combination of sounds will automatically motivate a listener
to commit some act of pro-environmental behavior: ‘… any powers of physical, mental, or social trans-
formation which music may have will result from a combination of social, psychological, and physical
factors’ (Ingram 2010, 69). It may be nigh impossible to distinguish any influence that a particular piece
of music might have on our attitudes from the myriad other influences in our lives. Our interpretations
of a piece may be as varied as we are as individuals, and not linearly derived from the intent of its com-
poser. Much ‘will depend on the listener’s pre-existing knowledge of, and support for, the theory of
the ecological, relational self on which the theory depends’ (Ingram 2010, 70). Educational philosopher
John Dewey (1934) describes art in general as an experience, and an art object or artistic medium as
simply the vehicle through which to have an artistic experience, interacting with all that the individual
engaging with that art brings to it. The meaning and value drawn from any piece in any art form is free
to differ from the intent of its creator and from audience to audience, which means that impacts are
hard to measure and predict. We therefore acknowledge our limitations, posing what questions we
can about the effects of music upon people without presuming that we can definitively learn all that
there is to learn about it, given the plethora of variables at play.
928 J. L. PUBLICOVER ET AL.

The English-language literature currently available on music as an EE and advocacy tool includes
embedded anthropological work by Pedelty (2012), a wider survey of political activists and musicians
by Pedelty and Racheli (2009), a critical overview of the music of the modern environmental move-
ment by Ingram (2010), and a discussion of connections between music, environmental, and scientific
themes by Turner and Freedman (2004). Allen (2012, 200–201) states that the environmental crisis is
a cultural crisis, and that the arts and humanities, including music and ecomusicology, thus play an
important role in understanding its cultural dimensions. Coss (2013) posits that, since engaging the
emotions is an important ingredient in a multicultural EE that strives to facilitate connections with the
lived experiences of other people and societies, the emotional dimensions of music can enhance such
cross-cultural understanding.
There are also scholarly discussions of particular musicians whose works have facilitated real-life
connections to environmental stressors. For example, Ramsey (2002) points to Stan Rogers’ music on
the social impact of the collapse of the Atlantic cod fishery and Woodie Guthrie’s on the agricultural
crisis created by ‘dust bowl’ soil erosion during the Great Depression as powerful vehicles in the uni-
versity classroom that relay information, create interest, and spur further explorations on these topics.
Pedelty (2012, 111–114) discusses Pete Seeger’s advocacy for the cleanup of the polluted Hudson
River and the related public-relations usage of the sloop Clearwater for educational tours of the river.
Gorlewski and Porfilio (2012) discuss hip hop as a message enhancer and a means of self-expression
for indigenous youth. There is coverage of the use of music and soundscapes in environmental activ-
ism (Branagan 2005; Galloway 2014; Pedelty 2016) and in school concerts (Lansfield 2015). Classical
composer R. Murray Schafer (1994) writes about the changing soundscapes of the modern industrial
world. The May 2011 music issue of the environmental journal Alternatives also reports informally on
the experiences of musicians engaging with environmental issues in the music industry (Wearing and
Jalava 2011). There are also informal databases of environmentally themed songs, such as Songs for
Environmental Education (2017).
Our study builds upon the existing literature by identifying and discussing parameters around music,
EE, and environmental advocacy from the point of view of a cohort of concerned professional musicians,
each of whom performed in their own unique contexts. We have approached this from the supposition
that they may be in a position – albeit a subjective one – to know the artistic relationships that they have
with their particular audiences and to gauge what may connect with them under certain circumstances.
While some informal entertainment literature has taken this approach, we have attempted to do so in
a more complete, formalized, and systematic manner in a scholarly setting than what has been done
thus far, while acknowledging our limitations.
Moore (2002) defines musical authenticity as the expression of some kind of genuinely felt truth,
manifesting in three overlapping types: (1) First-person – the truth of one’s own situation; (2) Third-
person – the truth of someone who is absent; (3) Second-person – the truth of the culture, and thus of
the audience (summarized from Moore 2002, 209–223). People may judge themselves from within, and
also be judged externally by others. As with any topic, issues of authenticity can also affect musicians
who engage with environmental topics, who may not want to engage, nor be seen as engaging, for
disingenuous reasons.

3. Methods
The study population was a cohort of professional musicians who recorded and contributed original
environment-related songs to the Playlist for the Planet, a 30-track compilation album released in 2011
by the David Suzuki Foundation, a Canadian environmental non-profit organization. Eleven tracks were
provincial/territorial winners of a Canada-wide environmental song contest, chosen through jury selec-
tion and online voting from among 600+ submissions. The other tracks, many previous releases, were
donated by popular Canadian artists and groups invited by the David Suzuki Foundation (David Suzuki
Foundation 2014a, 2014b).
 ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION RESEARCH 929

Using non-probabilistic purposive sampling, we invited all contributors to the Playlist for the Planet
to participate by means of a one-time, one-on-one interview. Contributing groups were asked to select
a single spokesperson. Fourteen musicians out of a possible thirty consented to be interviewed, for a
response rate of 47%. Participants consented knowing that their contributions were not anonymous.
The semi-structured, open-ended interview questions enquired into the authorial intent, composi-
tion, and delivery techniques for each artist’s song, its perceived reception, its dissemination through
performances and recordings, the place of environmentally themed music in the artist’s repertoire,
and what other avenues outside of performing and song writing s/he may have found to back up his/
her pro-environmental beliefs. Participants were also asked to reflect on what role music could play
in EE and cultural change toward sustainability, and what advice they might give to other musicians
engaging with environmentally themed repertoire and/or advocacy and to environmental educators
wishing to incorporate music into their programing.
Using this group of musicians as a study population allowed us to remove the biases of our own
musical tastes and areas of knowledge. The participants spanned a wide range of ages, backgrounds,
genres, time spent in the commercial music industry, experiences with environmental engagement,
and fan bases. Still, this group offered a glimpse into musical environmental engagement in only a
limited range of the possible types of musical presentation. The participants’ insights revolved around
how they felt their audiences responded to the environmental themes present in some portion of their
repertoire and to the causes for which they openly advocated, and their reporting was subjective. We
could not measure how many people in any audience actually were influenced to engage in increased
pro-environmental behavior as a result of their encounter(s) with any particular musician’s material.
Our results should thus not be considered representative of Anglophone Canadian recording artists
in general, nor of their audiences or any other population, but rather as a starting source of ideas that
may spur further research.
The participants’ interviews were recorded and transcribed. A constant comparative coding method,
organized with NVivo™10 qualitative analysis software (QSR International 2014), was used to code
sections of text pertinent to music and the environment in an inductive grounded framework. Four
generations of codes grew out of these data, from broad subject areas down to progressively more
specific shades of meaning, yielding emerging trends around the environmental issues and sociological
and artistic conditions faced by each artist. In allowing theory to emerge from the ground up rather
than testing a predetermined hypothesis, this inductive approach placed observation first, combining
exploratory/formulative (Creswell and Planco Clark 2011, 86–90) and transformative research typolo-
gies (Ibid., 96–99), thus incorporating research into an ongoing process of music and social change in a
manner that may generate useful ideas for further study. We discuss these emerging themes and select
some relevant quotes from the participants to help illustrate various facets of them.

4. Results and discussion

Various parameters emerged from the participants’ responses, to be considered for using music to
encourage pro-environmental values and normalize discussions of sustainability. Four of these param-
eters are artistic/creative dimensions best conceptualized as continua between the two ends of their
respective dichotomies: simple vs. complex, feel-good vs. not-feel-good, inclusive vs. adversarial, and
direct vs. ambiguous (Figure 1). Each interview participant has had to find his/her own position on each
continuum in each particular musical context, so as to reach listeners without overwhelming them,
‘preaching’ to them, or turning them off. Thus there appear to be flexible, multivalent responses to the
challenge of using music for EE that involve finding optimal positions on those continua for each new
context that arises. Because each context is different, musical and social references can evolve with time
and fashion, and even the artists themselves may conceptualize ideas like ‘sustainability’ differently,
taking a non-absolute or ‘fuzzy’ approach using these continua allows us to discuss their considerations
while avoiding a misleading and inaccurate one-size-fits-all formula. This fuzziness and multivalence
930 J. L. PUBLICOVER ET AL.

Figure 1. Artistic/creative dimensions of a hypothetical environmental song. Each of the four lines represents a continuum between
the two ends of a dichotomy. Together they represent the myriad gradations of choice that might be relevant to a musician when
creating an environment-inspired song and deciding when, how, and where to present it. A song will be characterized at one position
along each continuum. A song’s position on one continuum is independent of its positions on the other three.

aligns well with Eernstman and Wals’ (2013) recommendations around allowing for flexibility when
attempting to define sustainability.
Many of the participants have written simple, catchy tunes with predictable chord changes and
phrases that are easy to remember and to sing along with; others have chosen to make impact by
other means, sometimes more complex or dissonant, often expressing a musical tension mirroring the
tension that they themselves feel regarding the environmental subject material.
Participant Remy Rodden receives feedback such as this on his catchy, accessible children’s songs:
I’ve heard this anecdotally from teachers … you know the idea of the ‘brain worm’, the catchy song? … I presented
this biodiversity song with a class in Toronto one time, and they went to the museum after that. There was this display
on biodiversity, and of course they get there and the kids all break out into the song as they go into the museum.
Music can be considered a form of EE messaging. For example, McKenzie-Mohr (2011, 95) recommends
creating a ‘captivating message’ that is ‘vivid, concrete and personal’ and easy to remember when encour-
aging people towards pro-environmental thoughts and actions. Music has the captivating potential
of art and entertainment.
However, for some participants, whether a song turns out to be simple or more complex has more to
do with artistry and inspiration than with an audience in mind. Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq explains:
This is the thing when you’re discussing the human condition in art – I’m not trying to make it sound good … I’m
trying to express what it’s like to be alive right now … I’ve never worried about it sounding nice, it sounding right,
or I’ve never worried about whether or not the audience knows how to eat it properly. I refuse to think about that,
because otherwise I’ll start trying to please people, and then once you try to please people, you’re not doing it for
you anymore, and then it loses its potency.
An overlapping dichotomy is the contrast between ‘feel-good’ and ‘not-feel-good’ songs. Bruce
Cockburn’s ‘When a Tree Falls’ and Danny Michel’s ‘Feather, Fur and Fin’ are examples of Playlist songs
with angry statements about environmental degradation, while ‘The One’ by Keith and Renée and
Tara MacLean’s ‘No Surrender’ carry messages of hope and empowerment. Other Playlist songs fall at
points between.
One of the key attributes of the arts in general as a tool for EE is its ability to make us ‘feel’ something,
whether that feeling is positive or negative. Packalén (2010) and Eernstman and Wals (2013) advocate
for a greater role of the arts in EE because of this power. Tilbury’s (1997) ‘Head, Heart and Hand’ and
Pooley and O’Connor’s (2000) corresponding ‘cognitive, affective and behavioural’ approaches to EE
both call for a mix of tools with an essential component of affect/emotion. Many participants articulate
their awareness of the emotional power of music, such as Tara MacLean:
We live in a culture that is extremely distracted and tries to numb itself from feeling what needs to be felt in order
to act … A lot of people just say, ‘well, this hurts too much, I’m going to change the channel, I’m going to numb
myself to the pain of the world or to the pain inside myself, and that is going to be how I cope’ … So I’m trying to
access a really deep emotional place where people can’t be distracted from it.
 ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION RESEARCH 931

However, a balance of positive and negative messaging is important. McKenzie-Mohr (2011) applies
the models of Lazarus and Folkman (1984) regarding coping behaviors to environmental messaging.
Sometimes, negative, threatening messages spur people into action (problem-focused coping) more
effectively than positive messages, but that can backfire into non-action (emotion-based coping) if
there is no perceived hope for better outcomes with attainable action. Kelsey and Armstrong (2012)
recognize the potential for learners to feel overwhelmed and hopeless with stories of environmental
gloom and doom, stating that children in particular need to feel empowered to make positive change
through developing connections to and a love of the natural world. Children need a place for their
feelings, a forum for critical and creative thought, and communities and opportunities that facilitate
their active participation. In surveying teens and young adults about their views on climate change,
Ojala (2012) found that ‘constructive’ hope was positively correlated with pro-environmental behavior,
whereas hope based on denial was negatively correlated.
Participant Remy Rodden tailors his shows to his younger audiences, for whom the threshold for
burnout may be lower:
It’s about being sensitive about the balance between motivating people through all the negative scary stuff, but
[not] to the point where it’s too much and you numb out and you don’t take any action. So, especially with kids, I
tend to keep things fairly light and just touch on the different issues. And start with where we all connect, often
with the cute fuzzy animals, so in the habitat songs and the biodiversity songs … fun songs.
The participants indicate that as they put together a set list for a particular show, they must decide how
to balance the tone of a protest/motivational song with the other repertoire in the same way that they
would balance the ups and downs of any show. Bruce Cockburn designs his set lists for general esthetic
purposes that include any environment-related songs that happen to be in them:
I pay a fair amount of attention to putting the songs in order that makes some kind of aesthetic sense, so you don’t
have a whole bunch of slow songs in a row, and you don’t have a whole bunch of big downers in a row, and you
don’t waste all your amusing songs in the first five songs of the set, etc.
The third continuum explores taking an inclusive versus an adversarial approach to the presentation
of environment-related repertoire. Participant David Myles obtained a political science degree after
high school, but deviated from that career path into music. This has affected how he approaches envi-
ronmental issues as an entertainer. For him, music is refreshingly unifying. While he loves and respects
music that addresses serious and potentially polarizing problems,
… it wasn’t going to be my thing, just because I felt like I had spent a lot of time in that situation … I wanted to
be the type of performer and writer that brought all sorts of people to my shows, young and old, rich and poor
… I feel like there’s just enough politics out there, that sometimes it’s nice to have a space where people can just
have a good time and smile.
There follows a certain logic that casting a wider, more inclusive net may reach more people, but in some
situations in the commercial music industry, particularly in an entertainment context (as opposed to
one more explicitly oriented around education or advocacy), the messaging might need to be gentler
as a result, so as not to risk some fans turning away. In their survey of musicians engaged with political
activism – which sometimes overlaps with environmental activism – Pedelty and Racheli (2009) found
a similar type of tension for musicians wishing to speak out on issues but not wanting to alienate fans,
which could have implications for their careers and for their messaging.
Many of the participants incorporate audience participation into their shows, particularly communal
singing, which can help induce inclusivity. Cognitive psychologist Daniel Levitin discusses on National
Public Radio two effects of communal music-making through the example of choral singing:
When we sing [with others] … we’ve got to pay attention to what someone else is doing, coordinate our actions
with theirs, and it really does pull us out of ourselves. And all of that activates a part of the frontal cortex that’s
responsible for how you see yourself in the world, and whether you see yourself as part of a group or alone. And
this is a powerful effect. The second thing … it releases oxytocin. This is the neurotransmitter … associated with
social bonding … The oxytocin sets up this real bond and sense of trust and well-being towards the other person.
(Levitin in radio interview, in Shapiro 2013)
Participant Tara MacLean speaks about communal singing not only in concerts but also at environ-
mental protests:
932 J. L. PUBLICOVER ET AL.

When people are all singing ‘If we all stand on the road, they can’t arrest us all’, and chanting, chanting, chanting,
and voices raised together – it’s so incredibly powerful.
Regarding how directly versus ambiguously to pitch the message of an environment-related song,
many participants advise letting listeners decide for themselves on the meaning that they draw from
it, as they would with any other art, thus empowering them to direct their own artistic experience.
Hayley Sales states:
It’s more powerful to let people interpret a song on their own, and let the lyrics speak to them. Sometimes I’ll
[preamble] … but I try and keep it really short, and then just try and get them involved, clapping or stomping,
because I feel it kind of induces this sense of community. And then just let them interpret the song in the way that
makes sense to them, and what they take away from it, without being pushy.
Art that contains some degree of ambiguity gives us freedom to interpret it in our own way, and that
can be a pleasurable attribute of it. This was found by Jakesch and Leder (2009) in a study on percep-
tions of modern visual art. The degree of ambiguity that is most pleasurable – neither too much nor
too little – depends on context. This concept of balancing ambiguity may extend to other arts as well,
such as to music and lyrics. It may be that the musicians themselves are in the best position to feel out
what balance their particular audiences are most receptive to, with some familiarity as to the references
that they might already understand in that genre and what may be new for them.
Five quality dimensions also emerged from the data in the form of general recommendations from
the participants on creating and using environmentally-related music (Figure 2).
The participants recommend creating or picking high-quality music that is relevant and meaningful
to the target audience. Tarun Nayar summarizes:
In general for that stuff to work, the music has to be good! And ideally, relevant to the audience. So if you’re doing
a class with a bunch of kids who are Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber fans, it may be a little bit less effective to use a
Neil Young song [from an earlier generation] to push the point. It’s possible that they’ll get it, but it’s also possible
that they’ll just think that it’s totally irrelevant to their situation.
Pedelty and Racheli (2009) and Bonoguore (2011) affirm the need for the artistry to be good in order
for the message to avoid falling flat:
Musicians are quick to point out the one eternal truth about their craft: If it ain’t good, no one’s going to listen. ‘You
have to be careful before taking on a topic, even a broad one, because if it’s badly done, it’ll have no impact at all,’
Les Cowboys’ [Jérôme] Dupras warns. ‘To write a song with that kind of message, and for it to be a song that flows
and is cool, is easier said than done.’ (Bonoguore 2011, 14)
A variety of approaches and hooks can contribute to an overall greater efficacy of messaging. Many
participants discuss various composition techniques or ‘hooks’ that they have used, including refer-
encing or taking inspiration from other music, improvising, and using humor. For example, comedian
and musician Todd Butler referenced the staccato strumming rhythms of Beach Boys surf music in his

Figure 2. Quality dimensions of an environmental song. These five recommendations, emerging from participants’ responses directed
towards others who wish to engage with environmental issues through music, are intended to more globally inform and advise
whatever takes place with a given song, regardless of artistic/creative choices.
 ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION RESEARCH 933

song ‘Prairie Surfin,’ imagining a future dystopia where sea levels have risen and flooded the Prairies
because of climate change:
I think that vehicle is just perfect for the subject matter … It sort of depends on where your beliefs are as far as
global warming is concerned, whether it’s actually happening or not, so some people maybe aren’t as enthusiastic
about it – but the message is couched in comedy. So I think that that translates for most people. They realise that
I’m poking fun at it, but at the same time I’m making a point that … we need to start thinking about this seriously.
Tara Maclean summarizes: ‘You can do it fun, you can be angry, you can be sad, you can be wistful –
there are so many gates that you can open to have people come into your music.’
All participants find that writing from what they know and believe is the best way to maintain the
integrity and power of their work. This is their approach to first-person authenticity as described by
Moore (2002) – presenting the truth of their situation as they envision it. For them, it is the first step
towards becoming a credible spokesperson for the wider culture on the environmental issue at hand
– using first-person authenticity to work towards second-person.
All study participants indicate that they compose their environmentally themed repertoire through
the same creative processes as their other repertoire. They are inspired generally by issues that simply
move them personally, which applies equally to writing about environment-related issues. A wide array
of environmental concerns are addressed in the Playlist songs and in the artists’ other environment-re-
lated repertoire. These include: the natural world, family, community, interconnectedness, using your
gifts to make the world better, economic development, climate change, imbalances of power/wealth,
politics, consumerism/greed, abdicating responsibility, indigenous peoples, spirituality, etc.
Some songs connect to specific life experiences. Berna-Dean Holland’s Métis father overcame societal
discrimination and a lack of formal education to provide for his family by working in the Alberta petro-
leum industry, yet rued its destructive effects on the natural landscape. His daughter studied biology
in university and worked in wildlife conservation, and composed ‘Black Gold’ partly as an ode to him,
as well as to decry society’s addiction to fossil fuels. Keith Macpherson and Renée Lamoureux (Keith &
Renée) volunteered for the children’s charity Free the Children, building schools in Kenya, after which
they embarked on school concert tours across Canada fundraising and encouraging youth to empower
themselves to create positive change. For some participants, such as Jessie Farrell, Tara MacLean, Glenn
Sutter, and others, the experience of parenthood helped shape their outlook on the environment.
Inuk throat singer and participant Tanya Tagaq advocates for issues that tie into how humans inter-
connect with each other and with Mother Earth, whether that be around the destruction of the natural
world, the effects of colonialism on indigenous Canadians, missing and murdered indigenous women,
racism, destructive behaviors within indigenous communities, pollution, etc. Tarun Nayar, of the band
Delhi 2 Dublin, also speaks about interconnection:
We believe that people have lost that feeling of connection, with themselves, with the people around them, with
their environment, and that’s the root cause behind a lot of the challenges that we face. It’s hard to be a mean
person when you feel really connected, either to yourself or your neighbours.
All participants point out the potentially hypocritical aspects of preaching and its capacity to turn
listeners off with heavy-handedness, thus damaging the message. Tara MacLean says:
The worst thing you can do is preach … Music is like an invitation to open up, and the moment that you start
preaching to someone, that can close them. And so … to not preach, but to just ‘say’ something.
Preaching may be viewed as propagandizing, which Block (1948) states should be viewed suspiciously,
with its ulterior motive to manipulate opinion through subterfuge. It is this association with an ulterior
motive beyond the sincerity and the quality of their art that the Playlist artists wish to avoid.

5. Conclusion
All participants express their environmental values in a unique context with their particular fan bases
and performing circumstances. Many note that bringing environmental topics into the entertainment
sphere and modeling can help normalize the act of caring for the environment. Four artistic and five
934 J. L. PUBLICOVER ET AL.

quality parameters have arisen from their interviews. Rather than serving as absolute references, these
general parameters provide a multivalent framework that can help other musicians and educators to
think through their own particular musical projects, and to keep their environmental messages fresh and
relevant in the context of their particular artistry. Future research in this area could include examining
these parameters in different musical genres and performing circumstances. For example, researchers
could look more closely at why certain artistic decisions might have been made along various continua
because of a particular context. Some musical contexts may, in general, contain more of an element of
hedonism, or didacticism, or attentiveness to lyrics, etc. than others. While we should not be too hasty
to draw linear conclusions about efficacy (Ingram 2010, 237), EE can benefit from the dialog arising
through music, an art from which so many of us derive intense pleasure.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Jennifer L. Publicover (MES, MMus) is a professional musician, teacher, and scholar. This report documents part of her
Masters’ thesis research in the School for Resource and Environmental Studies at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia,
Canada, under the supervision of Dr Tarah Wright.
Tarah S. Wright (PhD) is Director of the Education for Sustainability Research Group and Professor in the Faculty of Science
at Dalhousie University. Tarah and her family make their home in the city of Halifax, originally the traditional lands of the
Mi’kmaq people, in the Acadian Forest Bioregion, at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
Steven Baur (PhD) is an Associate Professor of Musicology in the Fountain School of Performing Arts at Dalhousie University.
He has published on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western classical and popular music, and is an accomplished
drummer.
Peter N. Duinker (PhD, P.Ag.) is an environmental educator and scholar with degrees in agriculture, environmental studies,
and forest management. He is also an experienced choral singer.

ORCID
Jennifer L. Publicover   http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0379-4195

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