Musicians’ Climate Citizenry Blog

by Gabriela Lena Frank and Rebecca McFaul

We just can’t catch a break. That’s the thought going through every Californian’s mind in 2020, a truly unbelievable year. In this state, a long-time “contested Eden” of opportunity, Californians have been engaged in an awful feat of juggling: COVID-19, long overdue racial reconciliation, its senator in a brawl of a presidential race, and otherworldly wildfires… Wildfires in canyons, wildfires from freak dry lightning storms, wildfires lining major freeways and incinerating urban neighborhoods, wildfires that cast a smoky dark red glow of alarm over the entire West coast. The haunting rain of ashes—remnants of ruined homes, schools, cultural centers, and dreams—is not entirely filtered by the dutiful face mask encountering virus and soot.

by Gabriela Lena Frank

It wasn't one of my more PC moments.

by Gabriela Lena Frank

In the middle of the day, I can expect that solar lights and car headlights will turn on and the crickets will chirp as if it's dusk on Mars. What is this world?

by Rebecca McFaul

….opening hearts and minds is, and has always been, the work of artists.”

by Gabriela Lena Frank and Rebecca McFaul

In Boonville, California, a composer wakes from another nightmare, one of many lingering remnants of trauma wrought by two years of apocalyptic wildfires. Having left her native Bay Area to build a permaculture homestead in the rural north, she has missed concerts to stay behind with her husband during fire emergencies, and asked for extensions on pieces due. The two have become regulars at classes at the local fire station, and she watches her spouse toil daily clearing brush and felling trees to mitigate danger. On her mind, always, is Paradise, a nearby city of thousands that became a ghost town in a matter of hours in the Camp Fire of 2018. She, too, worries.

by Gabriela Lena Frank

At the time of GLFCAM’s founding, I didn’t anticipate that one day, environmentalism would become a crucial part of its mission, that I would tie the activities of music-makers directly to Mother Earth.