utopian ecomusicologies and musicking hornby island andrew mark a dissertation submitted to the ...

421 Pages·2015·5.95 MB·English

WHAT IS MUSIC FOR?:
UTOPIAN ECOMUSICOLOGIES AND
MUSICKING HORNBY ISLAND

ANDREW MARK

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO
THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
YORK UNIVERSITY
TORONTO, CANADA

August, 2015

© Andrew Mark 2015
Abstract
This dissertation concerns making music as a utopian ecological practice, skill, or method
of associative communication where participants temporarily move towards idealized
relationships between themselves and their environment. Live music making can bring people
together in the collective present, creating limited states of unification. We are “taken” by music
when utopia is performed and brought to the present. From rehearsal to rehearsal, band to band,
year to year, musicking binds entire communities more closely together. I locate strategies for
community solidarity like turn-taking, trust-building, gift-exchange, communication, fundraising,
partying, education, and conflict resolution as plentiful within musical ensembles in any socially
environmentally conscious community.
Based upon 10 months of fieldwork and 40 extended interviews, my theoretical
assertions are grounded in immersive ethnographic research on Hornby Island, a 12-square-mile
Gulf Island between mainland British Columbia and Vancouver Island, Canada. I describe how
roughly 1000 Islanders struggle to achieve environmental resilience in a uniquely biodiverse
region where fisheries collapsed, logging declined, and second-generation settler farms were
replaced with vacation homes in the 20th century. Today, extreme gentrification complicates
housing for the island’s vulnerable populations as more than half of island residents live below
the poverty line. With demographics that reflect a median age of 62, young individuals, families,
and children are squeezed out of the community, unable to reproduce Hornby’s alternative
society.
This dissertation begins with theorization that connects music making to community and
environmental thought. I then represent the challenges Islanders set for themselves and the
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struggles they face, like their desire for food sovereignty, off-grid energy, secure housing,
protection of their aquifers, affordability of ferry transportation, ecological waste-cycles, and
care for each other’s mental health. I bring attention to unique institutions that Islanders have
created to better manage their needs and desires. In response to the island’s social and
environmental dynamics of justice, I argue and demonstrate through ethnography that music
making is an essential communal process that brings people together to dialogue about their
needs and advance their goals to establish a more equitable and environmentally responsible
community.

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Dedication
For Tempest Grace Gale: You are on the lips of everyone who speaks of music herein. And for
Hilary Newitt Brown: Hornby could have never become the case study of this dissertation
without your influence. The politics of these two individuals were astonishing, unflinching, and
embodied. They are also well remembered, cherished, and contain so many of those things I

would like to see grow in my selves in place.
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Acknowledgements
This dissertation is a product of process and people. I want to acknowledge the dissertation
defence taking place on the traditional territories of the Mississauga of the New Credit First
Nation, the Huron-Wendat Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and the Metis Nation of
Ontario, and locate of the dissertation’s subject community of Hornby Island on the traditional
territories of the Pentlach, the K’ómox, We Wai Kai, and Klahoose First Nations. My thanks to
Meredith and Olin McEvoy, and all my family for your sacrifice and encouragement. My thanks
to Ken McEvoy and Judi McCallum in particular for your welcome, your home, your childcare,
and your support whenever we needed it. My thanks to all my friends and peers at York,
Amanda Di Battista, Sally Morgan, Sonja Killoran-McKibben, Ellen Sweeney, and David Font
in particular for your respect and console. My thanks to everyone on Hornby and in particular all
the musicians and artists who directly contributed to this research and the people who made our
stay on the island so worthwhile. Without the sponsorship of the Martens family, this research
would not have ever come about. My special thanks to my supervisor Peter Timmerman, and to
my committee members, Catriona Sandilands and Gage Averill, and also to Rob Simms for your
genuine tireless support and belief in the value of my work. Thank you Angie and Charlie Keil,
and Albert Chimedza for your wisdom, friendship, and love. My thanks to ecomusicologists
everywhere for helping to create a home for this work and to Tyler Kinnear, Mark Pedelty, and
Aaron Allen in particular, and to Mark Pedelty again for being my external examiner. My thanks
to Sherry Johnson for being my internal-external examiner, and to Leesa Fawcett for
representing our faculty at the defence. My thanks to my faculty for taking a chance on what I
trust I have convinced you is a worthwhile and proliferating pursuit within the world of
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environmental thought and our community at York. Most importantly, my thanks to the
ancestors for lending us your charge. Michael Marcuzzi, Christopher Small, are you listening?
We are lost, and we are playing for you to help us.
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Table of Contents
Abstract .............................................................................................................................. ii

Dedication ......................................................................................................................... iv

Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... v

Table of Contents ............................................................................................................ vii

List of Images ................................................................................................................... xi

Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1

PART I ............................................................................................................................. 12

Chapter 1: Preface .......................................................................................................... 13

Chapter 1: Theory ........................................................................................................... 17

Ecomusicology and Sociomusicology ...........................................................................18

A Musical Theory of Community ..................................................................................37

Utopia .............................................................................................................................44

North American Utopias ............................................................................................45

Mechanical Solidarity ................................................................................................49

Musicking Utopia .......................................................................................................55

Participation ...................................................................................................................59

Dialogue .........................................................................................................................75

Thick Place, Semiotic Density, or Deep Signification ..................................................79

Conclusion .....................................................................................................................93

Chapter 2: Ecoethnography ........................................................................................... 95

Hornby Island: History, Setting, and Context ................................................................96

Methodologies ..............................................................................................................111

Barriers .........................................................................................................................117

PART II ......................................................................................................................... 121

Chapter 3: Island Time Keeping ................................................................................. 122

Counting Time .............................................................................................................123

Chant Down Babylon ...................................................................................................134

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Arrival and Escape .......................................................................................................138

Non-Participatory Discrepancies .................................................................................141

Chapter 4: Tourism and Other Costs of Living ......................................................... 142

Housing the Revolution ...............................................................................................143

Work and Sacrifice ......................................................................................................152

Ferries and Denman .....................................................................................................157

Police ............................................................................................................................161

Tourists and Developers ..............................................................................................164

Mental Health ...............................................................................................................167

Chapter 5: Input and Output ...................................................................................... 170

Waste Cycle .................................................................................................................170

Consumable Habits ......................................................................................................175

Wireless, Smart Meters, Cell Phones, Jet Streams, Microwaves, Vaccines, Ley Lines, and
other “Exposures” ........................................................................................................179

Local Objects, Local Deeds .........................................................................................181

Chapter 6: Other Islanders .......................................................................................... 184

Big and Small ...............................................................................................................185

Ocean Dwellers ............................................................................................................190

Chapter 7.1: Gender, Reproduction, and Women ..................................................... 194

Beach Days ..................................................................................................................195

Island Rituals ...............................................................................................................201

Parenting ......................................................................................................................203

PART III ........................................................................................................................ 208

Chapter 7.2: Gender, Reproduction, Women, and Musicking ................................. 209

Playing with Others ......................................................................................................209

Division of Labour .......................................................................................................213

Tempest Grace Gale and Hilary Brown .......................................................................227

Melisa Devost ..............................................................................................................238

Chapter 8: Venues, Audiences, and Performers ........................................................ 248

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Pizza: A Taste of Paradise ...........................................................................................251

The Thatch: The Institution .........................................................................................254

Hornby Hall: The Community Performs .....................................................................259

New Horizons: Egalitarian Musicking? .......................................................................269

The Jam and the Practice: The Home of Confidence ..................................................275

Summer and Smaller Stages: Getting back up on one .................................................280

The Hornby Festival: A Community Negotiation .......................................................284

The Hornby Island Blues Workshop ............................................................................290

Joe King Ball Park .......................................................................................................292

Chapter 9: CHFR: 96.5 Degrees and Climbing! ........................................................ 299

Origins ..........................................................................................................................300

DJs ................................................................................................................................303

Chapter 10: The Rudiments ......................................................................................... 309

Membership .................................................................................................................311

First Rehearsals ............................................................................................................318

Counting Time .............................................................................................................322

The Band Space Continuum ........................................................................................326

Theories of Band Organization ....................................................................................329

The Community as Band .............................................................................................336

Singing and Talking the Community ...........................................................................340

Conclusion ...................................................................................................................345

Chapter 11: Theories from Hornby ............................................................................ 346

Dialogic Vibration as Being (in) Environment ............................................................347

Two Paths to Musicking and Environment: The Head and the Heart .........................359

Conclusion ...................................................................................................................367

Conclusion: What is Hornby For? .............................................................................. 368

Spaceship Hornby: What Music Is For ........................................................................378

References ...................................................................................................................... 382

Appendices ..................................................................................................................... 400

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Appendix A:
  Interviews ............................................................................................400

Appendix B:
  Rough Interview Script ........................................................................402

Appendix C:
  Informed Consent Form That All Research Participants Signed ........404

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