Sounding the Vernacular Sea

Abstract This article brings ecocritical insights from music studies to bear upon the traditional song repertoire of Nova Scotia in order to ask how those songs shape and reflect attitudes toward the marine environment and how they register or interrogate those attitudes in times of crisis. It centers on and contextualizes a 2019 performance from the province's rugged Eastern Shore, both a site of managed underdevelopment and a depopulated wilderness of immense natural beauty, to show how materials typically dismissed as romantic folk songs were used to guide discussions about a controversial government proposal, aimed at establishing a local Marine Protected Area in local fishing waters.