Gospel and the Blues In the days of the African slave trade to the United States the role of the environment was closely tied to spirituality and agricultural labor. Enslaved generations born in Africa passed down beliefs in divinity, superstition, and human connection to the natural world. “ Africans believed in the interconnectedness of the human, spiritual, and environmental realms and felt that harm toward or care for one necessarily affected the others.  These influences were expressed in the form of Spirituals or Gospel music and generally performed in either ‘praise houses’ or in outdoor communion called ‘ brush arbor meetings ’ or ‘bush meetings’ African American Spirituals. [Web.] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, URL This style of music was a way to authentically express the black experience in America, which in many ways meant reflecting on suffering. In reaction to this, references to heaven in gospel refer to it as a natural or pastoral landscape.Ingram, David. The Jukebox in the Garden : Ecocriticism and American Popular Music Since 1960, BRILL, , 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, URL Music since World War II After a radioactive isotope (Strontium-90) was found in cows milk in 1959, the concern for the environmental effects of the nuclear arms race increased. This sparked songs about the invisibility of environmental effects like radioactive isotopes. In his song "Mack the Bomb," Pete Seeger wrote a comparison between a shark and Strontium-90, explaining that the threat of a shark is at least visible, unlike radioactive isotopes. In 1962, Malvina Reynolds also wrote a song called "What Have They Done to the Rain?", which was inspired by above-ground nuclear testing, and how it was putting Strontium-90 into the air, then into soil through rain, which is how it got into cows and their milk. Further reading Berger, Bruce (1978). "Science, Environmentalism, and Music". The North American Review, Vol. 263, No. 1 (Spring, 1978), pp. 64–66. University of Northern Iowa Devine, Kyle (2019). Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music. MIT Press. Menezes Bastos, Rafael José de (2012). "Musicality and Environmentalism in the Rediscovery of Eldorado:An Anthropology of the Raoni-Sting Encounter" in Bob W. White (ed.) Music and Globalization: Critical Encounters '' , pp. 75–92 . Indiana University Press. Sturgeon, Noël (2009). Environmentalism in Popular Culture: Gender, Race, Sexuality, and the Politics of the Natural. University of Arizona Press.
Gospel and the Blues In the days of the African slave trade to the United States the role of the environment was closely tied to spirituality and agricultural labor. Enslaved generations born in Africa passed down beliefs in divinity, superstition, and human connection to the natural world. " Africans believed in the interconnectedness of the human, spiritual, and environmental realms and felt that harm toward or care for one necessarily affected the others. " These influences were expressed in the form of Spirituals or Gospel music and generally performed in either "praise houses" or in outdoor communion called " brush arbor meetings " or "bush meetings" African American Spirituals. [Web.] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, URL This style of music was a way to authentically express the black experience in America, which in many ways meant reflecting on suffering. In reaction to this, references to heaven in gospel refer to it as a natural or pastoral landscape.Ingram, David. The Jukebox in the Garden : Ecocriticism and American Popular Music Since 1960, BRILL, , 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, URL Music since World War II After a radioactive isotope (Strontium-90) was found in cows milk in 1959, the concern for the environmental effects of the nuclear arms race increased. This sparked songs about the invisibility of environmental effects like radioactive isotopes. In his song "Mack the Bomb," Pete Seeger wrote a comparison between a shark and Strontium-90, explaining that the threat of a shark is at least visible, unlike radioactive isotopes. In 1962, Malvina Reynolds also wrote a song called "What Have They Done to the Rain?", which was inspired by above-ground nuclear testing, and how it was putting Strontium-90 into the air, then into soil through rain, which is how it got into cows and their milk. Further reading Berger, Bruce (1978). "Science, Environmentalism, and Music". The North American Review, Vol. 263, No. 1 (Spring, 1978), pp. 64–66. University of Northern Iowa Devine, Kyle (2019). Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music. MIT Press. Menezes Bastos, Rafael José de (2012). "Musicality and Environmentalism in the Rediscovery of Eldorado:An Anthropology of the Raoni-Sting Encounter" in Bob W. White (ed.) Music and Globalization: Critical Encounters , pp. 75–92 . Indiana University Press. Sturgeon, Noël (2009). Environmentalism in Popular Culture: Gender, Race, Sexuality, and the Politics of the Natural. University of Arizona Press.
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