Music for Climate Action

I am a founding member of TEMPO: Music for Climate Action. Led by Dr. Lucy Jones, it is a coalition of physical scientists, social scientists and musicians to raise the level of well-informed awareness and engagements for climate action, using the power of music. Today, I am sharing a video of the 12-min presentation I gave for its symposium. For the multi-lingual international audience, I gave the presentation in Japanese with English subtitles. I will share the English transcription underneath the video below.

0:00 Thank you, Lucy and Paul. Hello everyone. 
0:05 As a Japanese pianist, 32-year U.S. resident, researcher,
0:11 and an activist promoting the power of music to heal and unite us,
0:15 I am so happy to be here with you today. 

0:20 I am convinced that music is effective for our purposes.
0:26 So why are we not seeing music being more utilized for climate action?
0:32 That is because individualism and commercialism have disempowered music,
0:39 leading us to discount its effectiveness.
0:44 To effectively engage the power of music for climate action,
0:48 we must first recognize some of the misconceptions we have about music. 


0:57 Before I start on the main topic,
0:59 please close your eyes for just six seconds
1:02 and listen to the following sound. (insect sounds)
1:11 Would you call this music?

1:17 Now, to the main topic:
1:19 Let’s start with our sense of hearing:
1:21 how it is directly tied to our emotions and survival instincts
1:27 Did you know that the brain processes sounds
1:32 20 to 100 times faster than it processes images? 
1:38 What we see goes to the prefrontal cortex
1:41 the part of the brain that deals with logic and attention.
1:47 We think about the images we see,
1:51 but sound is more emotional to us.
1:57 What we hear skips the prefrontal cortex	
2:00 and goes directly to a more primitive part, the amygdala, 
2:04 which deals with emotions and survival instincts.
2:08 An alarm gets us up.
2:11 An explosive sound turns our head to the sound source.
2:16 If the sound is really scary
2:18 we may start running before we even know it.
2:21 Sound is processed quickly by the brain
2:25 because we are more likely to hear an approaching threat
2:27 than to sense it with any of our other senses. 
2:31 Sounds travel far and wide, and
2:34 penetrate or get around/most materials that get in the way. 
2:38 We can hear from all directions,
2:41 even when we are asleep. 
2:44 Compare that to vision.
2:47 We close our eyes to blink and sleep. 
2:53 We can only see things in front of us,
2:55 and even so, other objects may/impede our line of sight. 

3:00 Now, let’s put our hands on our chests.
3:04 Let out a loud “AAAHHH” sound.
3:11 Do you feel the vibration in your hands? 
3:14 This is the power each of us has/to express, to connect, and communicate.

3:24 Now that we’ve established how essential sound is to us,
3:27 let’s talk about music as a universally human practice.
3:36 Music is a social practice.
3:39 We don’t know of a civilization that existed without a musical culture. 
3:46 Communal experience of music 
3:48 synchronizes our pulse, breath, and even brainwaves.
3:55 As social animals wired to cooperate and cohabitate for survival,
4:00 we find this musical togetherness assuring and encouraging. 
4:05 Music reminds us that we share our time and space,
4:10 and our fate with those around us.
4:15 Being a part of a musical ritual
4:17 makes us realize how we are a part of something bigger than ourselves. 
4:25 That is why every social movement in history has had its own songs and chants. 
4:31 Given this historical background,
4:34 it seems obvious we should use music to motivate climate action. 
4:39 So why has it not succeeded yet? 
4:44 Because modern day attitudes towards music
4:48 prevent us from leveraging its unique power 
4:52 Let me list a few for our purposes here with Tempo.

4:59 Number one. 
5:01 Until recently in our history,
5:03 music has always been a communal act. 
5:08 However, the invention of phonograph in the late 19th century
5:11 and the following advancement of audio technology
5:14 turned music into a solitary act. 
5:18 Today, we use earphones, headphones,
5:22 smartphones and laptops to use digitized music 
5:25 as a wall against the rest of the world. 
5:29 What is that doing to our humanity? 

5:35 Number two.
5:37 Commodification of music and musicians 
5:40 segregated active musicians from passive audience. 
5:46 It also proliferated presentational concert formats,
5:50 and demoted communal musical rituals. 

5:54 Let me explain. 
5:56 There are two types of music:
6:00 presentational and participatory. 
6:03 Presentational music is like a speech at an organized rally.	
6:09 It is given by a leader. 
6:12 It is meant to inspire awe. 
6:16 It is specific to the occasion,
6:18 and is not to be emulated. 
6:22 On the other hand, participatory music invites everyone
6:27 to take part as musicians and dancers. 
6:31 It is simple and repetitive in style. 
6:36 This would be the equivalent of 
6:38 chanting slogans and sing-alongs at rallies. 
6:42 The music industry devalues communal music,
6:46 and worships a few marketed musical idols and their rhapsodies
6:49 in presentational concert format.

6:53 Number three. 
6:55 The power of active listening. 
6:59 Have you ever felt any power
7:01 over the music you were listening to?
7:06 It’s probably like asking if you ever felt any power or influence
7:08 over the issues discussed on world news. 
7:12 I assume the answer is “never.”
7:16 The sense of helplessness that demotivates us is
7:19 perpetuated by our system of communication dictated by IT and the media. 
7:25 We experience a similar lack of agency
7:31 when we listen to pre-recorded music.  
7:34 The “live” concerts we do attend are held in massive concert halls
7:37 and your meager presence is one of hundreds, or thousands. 
7:42 Even our reaction to the music is prescribed 
7:45 by the media, marketers, and "influencers."
7:52 As the music and the news are played at us in a one-way stream
7:57 we have relinquished our power that lies in the act of listening.
8:04 But in the practice of music as an innately human act,
8:08 music without a listener does not exist. 
8:11 Just as beauty is in the eye of a beholder,
8:15 music is in the ears of its listener. 
8:19 Music is communication. 
8:21 The root of music is our human desire to understand and to be understood. 
8:28 Music is not a commodity to be consumed,
8:31 but a practice to savor/the here and now, together. 
8:36 As a way to practice music, listening is just as important as 
8:41 composing and performing, if not more. 

8:45 Now, let’s go back to listening to that six-second sound sample from earlier. 
(INSECT SOUNDS)
8:57 Is this music to your ears? 

9:04 In the 1970’s, Dr. Tadanobu Tsunoda published a paper claiming that
9:07 native Japanese speakers processed insect sounds
9:09 in the same brain region as language,
9:13 whereas speakers of other languages largely processed it as noise.  
9:19 His popular publication received some criticism over his employed methods,
9:27 but his son is continuing the study with updated methods today. 
9:34 Regardless of the accuracy of Dr. Tsunoda’s study,
9:37 Japanese culture cherishes soundscapes more highly than American culture. 
9:44 For example, in Japanese tea ceremony, the sound of water being boiled and poured 
9:48 as well as the tea being whisked are all considered a part of the hospitality. 
9:53 Can Westerners appreciate insect sounds
9:55 as music, or even language, too?
9:59 Apparently so. 
10:01 In British Columbia in the 1960’s,
10:05 a new musical genre called acoustic ecology started using sounds to
10:09 study the relationship between humans and their environment. 
10:16 They uncovered symphonies of nature and man-made sounds 
10:18 which revealed the loss and damage that we cause our environment. 
10:24 This is a good reminder of the importance of listening. 

10:29 The domination of presentational music is a result of the Western individualism. 
10:34 I spent much of my musical career fighting to defy the Asian female stereotype
10:37 as submissive, demure and inconsequential,
10:42 by pursuing my own unique musicality.
10:48 Studying neuroscience relieved me of that pressure. 
10:55 When I realized that music exists to help us appreciate our interconnectedness,  
11:01 I could hear the music again. 
11:05 When you are shouting all the time,/you cannot hear the world around you. 
11:11 So, let us start listening to/the music of our world around us,
11:14 and join our voices/in harmony and solidarity. 

11:19 Music encourages us in our connection and humanity.  
11:23 To that end, let us consider why
11:25 music is essential to our humanity,
11:27 and why listening is essential/to our appreciation of our interconnectedness,
11:32 so that we can be stronger together as we develop TEMPO. 
11:37 Thank you for listening.