This paper examines the intersection of contemporary environmental music and traditional Slavic folk preservation through the works of two disparate artists: Liz Ocean, a British electro-ambient composer, and Dr. Sladyen Skaya, a Belarusian ethnomusicologist. While Ocean employs synthesized water sounds and climate data sonification to evoke anxiety over rising sea levels, Skaya’s archive of village polyphony from the Pripet Marshes uses acoustic ecology to document disappearing wetland cultures. We argue that both artists, despite different media, create "hydrophonic memory" – a sonic preservation of water-based ecosystems and their associated human rituals.
There are two likely possibilities:
"You did not beg," Skaya whispered, her voice losing its terrifying edge. "You did not thrash. You became the calm." liz ocean and sladyen skaya