Sustainability questions are in the middle of every part of the music scene. Or at least they could be. How do artists and audiences get to gigs? How do clubs and venues think about electricity and water usage? About waste and recycling? What kind of materials go into synthesizers, drum machines, mixers, and all the gear that producers, DJs, and live performers use? Can sustainability themes be embedded into the music? At the same time, politics and justice – the social dimensions of sustainability - have always been a part of dance music. This brings up another set of questions like who is on the lineup? Whose music gets played? Who gets paid and how much? Who is in the audience? Where can music be played? And who gets to make those decisions?

This talk explores the role of sound and music in sparking connections to sustainability along multiple dimensions through questioning and sharing examples from around the world. Questions like how does sound and music flow across (or be stopped by) borders? How can music challenge Western and Colonialist structures like scale, rhythm, and meter? How is performance gendered and perceived through voice and movement? And how might we disrupt these perceptions? The talk is designed to foster conversation and reflection on these questions – as artists, as designers, as performers, as coders, as citizens.