The More-than-human Worlds of Australian Shakuhachi Music

The development of an Australian shakuhachi scene has seen the composition of new music for this Japanese flute that responds to Australian landscapes and environmental issues both local and global. This article examines the web of relations – the social geography of Australia’s shakuhachi scene; cultural imaginaries linking the instrument with nature and ecology; composers’ phenomenological relationships with places and creatures – that make up the “more-than-human worlds” of these compositions. In doing so, it presents the first scholarly study centred on the Australian shakuhachi scene and shows how instruments and new musical repertoires can mediate environmental concerns and projects of place-making.