Abstract

Musicking tells us much about human engagement with local ecosystems. In this paper, I show how tourism has encouraged traditional musical practices in the alpine Tatra Mountains, but is also changing human relationships to the landscape. How might collaborations with environmental scientists empower performance traditions to reinvest in traditional ties to locally specific ecologies? What do music and other performance studies specialists have to contribute to our understandings of human impact on ecosystems? One contribution is qualitative studies grounded in long-term ethnographic research that documents local changes in human engagement with local ecologies. Our research shows that the expanding tourism industry in the Tatra region, funded by changing economic systems since 1989, have fundamentally changed many people’s relationship to the mountain landscape. In collaboration with local stakeholders, the objective of the research is to encourage governmental policy and tourism industry standards that honor the traditional relationships between humans and this unique mountain ecosystem, including documenting and celebrating the traditions of musicking (instrument making, singing, dancing, etc.) that models performatively how humans can live symbiotically within challenging landscapes.

Presenters

Timothy Cooley
Professor, Department of Music (Ethnomusicology), Global Studies, University of California Santa Barbara, California, United States

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

2024 Special Focus—Tourism, Leisure and Change: Transforming People and Places

KEYWORDS

Musicking, Ecosystems, Mountains, Traditions, Poland, Landscape, Tourism, Policy

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