Music-Making-Materials: Natural Resource Use and Sustainability in Musical Instrument Making

Sustainability in music has become increasingly important in research communities and music cultures over the last decades, crossing various academic disciplines and fields of study as well as domains of practical and specialised knowledge. Departing from Jeff Todd Titon’s (2009) ground-breaking edited volume “Music and Sustainability”, different approaches of music sustainability were discussed linking cultural management practices with ecological viewpoints and concepts such as ecosystem, resilience thinking, adaptive management, and commons research. Ecomusicological scholars as well as resource managers and environmental geographers have drawn attention to the fact that important relationships to materiality, natural resources, and the natural environment are central to music sustainability. One of the main concerns is about natural resources employed in musical instrument making and the multilayered social, political, economic, cultural, ecological, biophysical, and species-specific biological dimensions that are implicated in the sourcing of natural materials. This international online conference seeks to explore the current status of research on the intersection of MusicMaking-Materials in different global and local contexts and a variety of music cultures. The aim of the conference is (1) to provide a comprehensive status quo of current research on natural resource use and sustainability in musical instrument making and (2) to identify current and future challenges and possible approaches to address them sustainably on different relevant spatial scales (local, regional, national, global, etc.). 

For the international online conference and planned edited volume (conference proceeding), we seek paper presentations and other contributions (audio-visual materials, posters, etc.) from inter- and transdisciplinary scholars and musical instrument makers that flesh out different themes in specific case studies about the nature of resource use, material sourcing, and sustainability issues from an ecological, environmental, and resource-oriented perspective. We welcome papers and contributions that address various aspects of Music-Making-Materials, including but not limited to: 

• Materiality and sustainability in musical instrument making
• Specific case studies addressing the sourcing and use of natural resources in different local and global instrument making contexts
• Sustainability and traditional knowledge (Indigenous, ecological, environmental, craftrelated, cultural, musical, etc.) 
• Challenges in covering resource demands due to resource scarcities and overexploitations
• (Un)sustainable forms of sourcing natural resources for musical instruments
• Threatened species for musical instruments
• Steering mechanisms (such as legal frameworks or common property management systems) fostering sustainable natural resource use in musical instrument making
• Theoretical frameworks that approach the intersection between musical instrument making, natural resource use, and sustainability
• Elaborations on sustainability criteria for musical instrument making on local and global scales
• Alternative materials for musical instruments

Interested contributors are invited to submit an abstract (approximately 350 words) by June 30^th to hachmeyer@uni-hildesheim.de. The conference will be held online via Zoom on October 18^th 2024. Questions regarding the conference and abstract submission can be sent to the conference organisers.

Conference Organisers:

Dr. Sebastian Hachmeyer (Center for World Music, University of Hildesheim) (hachmeyer@uni-hildesheim.de)

Silke Lichtenberg, M.Sc. (Institute for Technology and Resources Management in the Tropics and Subtropics, University of Applied Sciences Cologne) (silke.lichtenberg@th-koeln.de)