Music, Resilience and ‘Soundscaping’: Some Reflections on the War in Ukraine

Abstract

There exists a rich corpus of literature exploring some of the diverse roles – positive and negative – that music can play in war. This interdisciplinary article makes a novel contribution to this literature, and to research on the sociology of music more broadly, through its particular emphasis on resilience. Scholarship on resilience has increasingly moved beyond person-centred, psychology-based approaches towards more complex relational and multi-systemic framings that situate the concept in the interactions between individuals and their social ecologies (environments). However, it has given little attention to the sensory dimensions of these ecologies, including their acoustic dimensions. Focusing on the war in Ukraine and drawing primarily on media sources (including several online videos) to develop its analysis, the article argues that music can be a form and expression of resilience (and resistance) in war situations that directly acts on the acoustic ecology – a concept that to date has mainly been discussed within ecology and conservation research. Specifically, the article frames music as a form of ‘soundscaping’, in the sense of an active aligning of sound and wellbeing.