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Music, Memory, and the Loss of Place

Morton - Bavarian Group.JPG

Morton, Bavarian Group (ca. 1937) Click here to see full image.

The idea of solastalgia is mirrored by words in other cultures. For example, hiraeth is a Welsh concept of longing for home, but many Welsh people say it cannot be translated and is more than just missing something: it implies the meaning of missing a time, an era, or a person. It can also be used to describe a longing for a homeland, potentially of your ancestors, where you may have never been. Solastalgia can be compared to this emotional state in that it reflects a feeling of fear of the future while longing for the past while you are stuck in the present. You already miss the way you feel right now, being scared of the future, and art can often evoke this feeling.

Although we weren’t around during the 1930s, we can look at art and feel nostalgic for a time that we didn’t live in simply through the emotion evoked by the art we are interacting with. Jay Morton's Bavarian Group is one painting from the New Deal Gallery that reflects this emotion. Although it seems to be random in the assortment of other still lifes and landscape paintings of the collection, there is a feeling of hiraeth connected to this painting. Morton may have been longing for their homeland, or the homeland of their ancestors. The people in the painting are sitting around a table under a single enclosing light, wearing clothing that would have been old fashioned even for the time it was painted; it seems as though they are huddling together to hold on to some sliver of the past they still have to themselves. At the painting's center, strangely, is a song played by the two musicians that we cannot hear.

Music can evoke emotions in a way the visual arts can, such as in film soundtracks; although a viewer is not connected to the people or events in the film, the music elicits an emotional response simply by the mood it creates. Art, whether visual or auditory, helps us form relationships to people and places and times. Music and other types of art evokes different emotions from those who interact with it, although there can be a sense of connection from the community that all engages with the same music or art. Ecomusicology is a term that describes this sensation; it is the study of music, culture, and nature in all the complexities of those terms. In other words, it is about music and how it relates to culture in every sense. So what does any of this have to do with music? Since these concepts are heavily based in emotion, the music in movie soundtracks can be used as an example. They are used to encourage the watcher/listener to feel something while they engage with the media, and that song will, in the future, remind the listener of the emotion they felt while watching the movie, even if they hear the song in a context far from the movie.

"Misty Mountains" The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra 

Woody Guthrie "Dust Bowl Refugee"

The instrumental music of "Misty Mountains" elicits an emotional response due to the somber tone; the watcher/listener is encouraged to feel sad along with the dwarves who have lost their home in the Misty Mountains of their world. Although the world in The Hobbit is fictional, and the viewer has not lost their home, they still feel a sense of melancholy due to the music that plays in the scene. The soundtrack to the 1930's would definitely include the music of Woody Guthrie, because he is arguably the most well-known musician of the time, though the general feeling of the time is one of sadness and loss. "Dust Bowl Refugee" is a Woody Guthrie song that works well with the concept of solastalgia, as evidenced by these lyrics of the song: "Yes, we ramble and we roam / And the highway that's our home, / It's a never-ending highway / For a dust bowl refugee." These words were written during a time when people were displaced and did not have a single place to call their own; they were trying to chase some lost feeling of home. Although we were not alive during this time and can not directly empathise with the feelings Guthrie and others during this time would have been dealing with, our understanding can be increased through the music and the lyrics of Woody Guthrie.