Field to Media is about amplifying musical communities’ responses to environmental challenges. Field researchers worked with communities in Canada, Bangladesh, China, Haiti, India, Tanzania, and the United States to create musical videos and cinematic messaging about climate change, water pollution, deforestation, and the impact of motor noise on marine life. Below you will find a full length film about the project, followed by all of the musical videos, documentary shorts, and publications generated by the project. Field to Media was funded by the Humanities Without Walls’ “Humanities in a Changing Climate” based at the University of Illinois, which is, in turn, funded by the Mellon Foundation.
Musical Mangrove is a story about a transnational ecomusical movement to save the world’s largest mangrove forest, Sundarbans, shared between India and Bangladesh. The film is called “Musical Mangrove” because it shows how the artists and musicians of both countries are using music and performing arts to propel an environmental movement. It follows the story arc of late Mr. Arjun Modal, his three indigenous musical groups, and a group of Bangladeshi artists who use visual and performing arts to fight against unsustainable policies. While following the stories of the groups and individuals, “Musical Mangrove” talks about the threats to the forest posed by climate change, erratic weather events, saltwater intrusion, rising sea level, unsustainable industrial encroachment, and what it does to the people living in the forests.
Dirksen, Rebecca, Mark Pedelty, Yan Pang, and Elja Roy. (in press). “Exploring the Environmental Humanities through Film Production.” Empirical Ecocriticism. Volume edited by Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Frank Hakemulder, Wojciech Malecki, and Alexa Weik von Mossner. Yale University Press.
Dirksen, Rebecca. (in press). “Reinvoking Bran Bwa (Great Forest): Music, Environmental Justice, and a Vodou-Inspired Mission to Plant Trees across Haiti.” Music and Human Rights. Edited by Peter G. Kirchschlaeger, Manfred Nowak, Julian Fifer, Alessio Allegrini, Angela Impey, and George Ulrich. Abingdon-on-Thames, UK: Routledge.
Hatfield, Tara. (2019). “Music, Musicians, and Social Advocacy: Environmental Conservation, Knowledge-Sharing, and Cultivating a Culture of Wisdom in Northern Tanzania.” http://hdl.handle.net/2142/104917.
Pedelty, Mark. (2020). “Singing across the sea: the challenge of communicating marine noise pollution.” Casey R. Schmitt, Theresa R. Castor and Christopher S. Thomas, Editors, Water, Rhetoric, and Social Justice: A Critical Confluence. Lanham, MD: Lexington books.
The following is a documentary overview of the project near the time of completion. Note: as discussed here, a few objectives were unmet at the time of filming. A few of them, including policy impact, festival success, and planned subsequent production, have been achieved since recording the featured interviews with team members. Nevertheless, this documentary provides a useful window into the methods, theoretical framework, and most of the coproductions generated by project contributors.