Conclusion

This concluding chapter summarizes the book’s historical trajectory. It also synthesizes and reviews the book’s three primary conclusions: that music and ecology are linked through political and economic contexts; that environmental phenomena affect popular music in both material and semiotic ways; and that the discursive invention of Brazil’s northeast region has had material effects on the region and on the northeastern experience. Finally, it concludes that environmental change will affect (and has affected) music and musical culture in many ways, and that tendencies toward neoliberalism will make vulnerable many musicians and listeners.