Don’t Organize, Mourn: Environmental Loss and Musicking

Joe Hill, a labour activist and singer-songwriter of the early 20th century, is best remembered today for the slogan, “Don’t mourn, organize!” This paper confronts Hill’s sentiment. When acknowledging the irreparable damages the human species is inflicting upon itself and the planet, immediate action feels desperately required. These motivations are laudable, but they also represent an impulse to repress considered confrontation with the past. How will ecomusicology contribute a new perspective to understanding environmental loss and failure? How does making music transform our losses and our production of environmental loss? The (Freudian) psychic structure of commodity fetishism allows consumers to replace lost objects with new attachments without coming to terms with the full consequences of consumption. However, the creative arts give language, signification, ritual, and community to otherwise unspeakable, un-acknowledgeable, and un-grievable loss and repercussions. This article represents an acknowledgment of the shift in the environmental movement towards more concerted focus on mourning and melancholy and entertains opportunities that may exist for ecomusicologists in this burgeoning theoretical space.