Finding Purpose
written by Michael-Thomas Foumai
This Composing Earth blog is supported by New Music USA and featured on NewMusicBox.
An essential component of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music's Climate Commitment, Composing Earth is a commissioning program for composers who recognize that climate change — climate disruption — is a bona fide civilizational emergency.
Composing Earth asks for a two-year commitment from Composer Alumni of GLFCAM. In the first year, composers receive a study stipend to participate in a monthly discussion group with peers, Gabriela, and renowned scholar/communicator of climate science (and music lover) Dr. Rob Davies. These meetings provide an opportunity to review articles, books, documentaries, and online resources regarding the climate crisis, allowing the composer time to find their own personal stories which inspire their commissioned work in the second year. Along the way, "weekly musings" are sent out every Wednesday by a member of the cohort to the full group. Some of these musings, whether in the form of personal letters and other times developed into soulful essays, are featured in the series below.
Just out of school in 2014, I witnessed childhood friends, relatives, and peers who pursued non-musical careers make tangible changes and developments to improve their communities. Writing music gave me great joy, but I questioned if there was a purpose for it that was equally wholesome. The question lingered, could composing music enact change as a doctor treating a patient, an attorney representing a client, or a senator voting for public policy?
A TREE WITH DEEP ROOTS
I returned to my roots and joined the faculty at the University of Hawaiʻi. Teaching fulfilled what I perceived to be a greater purpose, but that was just a part of a larger mission. Then in 2017, I began composing music about the Polynesian Voyaging canoe Hōkūleʻa. I had primarily avoided exploring my Polynesian roots (out of shame for ignorance). Still, as I learned of the ingenuity of the ancient Hawaiians, skilled navigators capable of sailing more than 2000 miles of the deep ocean with only the stars and currents of the sea to guide them, I was compelled to know more and to tell these stories with music.
With finite resources aboard the canoe, conservation ensured the crew's survival, and this continued on land. Isolated in the Pacific, the Hawaiian Islands are a much larger canoe. By extension, today, our planet is an island, an island earth in a vast sea of universal darkness. For over a thousand years, the ancient Hawaiians thrived sustainably, untouched by the known world. However, with anti-Hawaiian policies in the years after the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893, a wealth of indigenous knowledge was nearly erased from history, dismissed as primitive and treasonous. Today, with 90 percent of food and resources imported, Hawaiʻi is unsustainable.
ISLAND EARTH
In his decades leading the Hōkūleʻa voyages, Master Navigator Nainoa Thompson witnessed the corrosion and inflammation of Earth's circulatory system, from the bleaching of coral reefs, the continent of floating garbage in the Pacific, and vanished Polynesian islands from sea level rise. The dire state of the planet pushed Thompson to send a worldwide message that our world is in trouble. Thompson recalls the words of Astronaut Charles Lacey Veach (1944-1995):
"You can never believe the beauty of island Earth until you see it in its entirety from space,” recalls Veach. He was the world's greatest optimist, but he always felt a great concern over the imbalance between human needs and the limited resources of our small planet, over the danger of exponential population growth and depletion of natural resources to support that growth. He would talk about how the 21st century was going to be very different from the century we're leaving. There would be great challenges ahead; there would be places on this planet that are going to be, by our own definition of quality of life, extremely substandard.
On one of his shuttle flights, a fellow crew member woke Lacey up and told him to look out the window--they were passing over the Hawaiian Islands. Lacey could see all the Islands, and he could see his whole spirit and soul here. He saw the entire planet in one vision. "The best place to think about the fate of our planet is right here in the islands. If we can create a model for well-being here in Hawai'i, we can make a contribution to the entire world."
Hōkūleʻa sparked a new sense of purpose deeply tied to my own identity. There were stories to tell and a purpose and role for me as a composer to represent these stories through concert music. Moreover, venturing into the voyaging communities demonstrated a real possibility for creating summit-like performances, an opportunity to forge strategic partnerships with industry leaders, sponsors, and lawmakers and have them in one place.
BEYOND MUSIC
Shortly after, I was encouraged to join a leadership cohort comprised of individuals from all segments of the community called the Pacific Century Fellows. I had no idea what to expect from the program that was based on the White House Fellows. I was stepping outside my comfort zone; alums from this program included a sitting senator, the then governor, and executives from the private and public industries. I felt grossly out of place, but what I had learned from Hōkūleʻa and the Composing Earth initiative, pushing for social change and solving the climate crisis, cannot be done alone. The program gave me behind-the-scenes access to Hawaiʻi's different issues and working sectors, such as tourism, renewable energy, military, recycling, homelessness, agriculture, and criminal justice; it became clear that, like climate change, everything is connected.
DEFENDING KALO
My cohort embarked on a trip to Hawaiʻi Island (Big Island) in the final months of the program. On our last day, we traveled to a Loʻi (Taro Farm) at the Hale O Kalo in Waipio Valley. The cultivation of Kalo (breadfruit) is a staple of sustainable Hawaiian agriculture. Knee-deep in the cool fudge-like mud of a taro patch, bent over and pulling Kalo from its roots, I was closer to the Earth than I have ever been, literally reaching into the ground and connecting with the sustainable past of our ancestors.
The road into the valley is steep and treacherous. It's a narrow mountainous path slowly eroding from constant heavy pedestrian and significant vehicle traffic, the mark of over-tourism. The nearby black-sand beaches and lush manicured green farms of the Taro farmers is a haven for tour companies cashing in on busing in tourist. Crops suffer, and irrigation infrastructure is contaminated when vehicular traffic moves through privately owned farmland, but tour companies assert legal precedent for access. When the Hawaiʻi Island mayor closed the road to Waipio and restricted it to residents (mainly farmers), tour companies sued, and the local media portrayed the story as an infringement on rights. The appetite for capitalizing on natural resources is not new in Waipio or the entire Hawaiian Islands. However, this demonstrates the hurdle with profiting enterprises and the assertion of entitlements, and it is salt in the womb. Business and commercial interests led to the Hawaiian Kingdom's demise; it continues with our planet.
SERVING THE COMMUNITY
Exploring my roots with Hōkūleʻa and joining the leadership cohort confirmed the necessity of going beyond music, seeking out, reaching out, learning, and listening. The Waipio trip became the story of my Composing Earth work, music that represents environmental themes through the lens of Hawaiʻi. My journey towards music citizenry began with a personal search, and this has remained with the need to specifically create Pacific work.
Recently, I joined the Hawai'i Symphony Orchestra as the Director of Artistic Engagement and Composer in Residence. This position has given me a platform to voice, design, and curate symphonic programming to push for representation and social issues front and center. But there's work to cultivate and expand an audience to connect with music as more than just entertainment but as an enriching metaphor; work that is part of the larger campaign to use music as an agent for connection and education. The tools to effect change are already here, and as a composer I have chosen to add my voice to our counterparts in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields advocating for carbon-reducing policies. Music has a purpose to serve. We have the scientist in our musicians, the technology in their instruments, the engineers in our composers, and the mathematics of our music to send a unified message to Mālama Honua (to care for our island earth).
Dr. Michael-Thomas Foumai (b. 1987, Honolulu, Hawai‘i) is a composer of contemporary concert music and educator. His music has been described as “vibrant and cinematic” (New York Times) and “full of color, drama, and emotion” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). A prolific composer of symphonic music, his work focuses on storytelling and the history, people and culture of his Hawaiʻi home. In 2019, he was selected into the 17th class of the Pacific Century Fellows comprised of 35 outstanding and talented young leaders to represent the individual and professional diversity of Hawaiʻi, including government, small-and-large-businesses, the arts, non-profit and corporate enterprises. Through his works, he was was awarded the Mayor of Honolulu Certificate of Recognition and the recognition by proclamation from the State Senate of Hawaiʻi.