Music is recognized as an essential constituent of the diversity of life on Earth and is enshrined in the concept of biocultural diversity. While research shows that song is an untapped library of biocultural memory, ethnobiologists have not yet explored the many areas in which studying songs and music through an ethnobiological lens could bring into focus the multi-dimensional relationships among humans and their biological worlds. The research articles in this special issue illustrate the importance of songs as both a repository of ethnobiological knowledge and as a means to construct, maintain, and mobilize peoples' intimate relations with their local ecologies. Although many traditional music-making systems are under risk of attrition, the extent to which traditional songs continue to be performed and celebrated in many Indigenous and local communities attests not just to the endurance and resilience of their cultures, but also to their deep cultural attachment to their lands as manifested through song. This special issue constitutes one significant step towards the recognition of music both as a timeless prism for looking at human-nature inter-relations, in all their complexities and magnificence, and as an essential form of biocultural heritage, worthy of documentation, conservation, and revitalization.

Songs encode rich knowledge of the social and ecological worlds of Aboriginal people living in the arid interior of the Australian continent, a desert with one of the most variable rainfalls in the world. People have shaped the ecology of this region in continuous feedback loops over many generations such that there is nowadays a complex system of interdependence between cultural practices and the local ecosystems. Singing traditions are an integral part of the spiritual health of the ecosystem and the means by which biocultural knowledge is carried on over many generations and through shifting social and ecological contexts. To illustrate this, we draw on traditional women's totemic songs relating to edible seeds from the Warlpiri and Anmatyerr Aboriginal groups in Central Australia. Edible seeds, predominantly acacias and grasses, once played a major role in sustaining the populations of these desert regions. They are one of five locally named food classes. We show how songs and their performance practices interact with techniques of seed production and knowledge systems connecting people to biota, the land, and their totemic religion. Traditional songs carry forward biocultural knowledge; yet, these songs and knowledge are under increasing threat because few contexts exist for their continued performance as mass media and new musical genres (e.g., country, pop, gospel) take center stage across Central Australia.

In rural Mongolia, local ecosystems support many of the daily life needs of both human and nonhuman populations. Kazakh pastoralists in the westernmost province of Bayan-Ölgii, in Mongolia, have established complex relationships with the land. They not only rely on resources for their subsistence but, as ecosystem stewards, they maintain ecological knowledge that is tied to local and regional biodiversity. This study explores how Kazakh pastoralists use locally created songs to express both relationships with the land and a sense of well-being. The social settings for singing and the images in song lyrics that reinforce a sense of place and relationships with resources provide pathways for social transmission of knowledge. This is especially important during this period of ecological, economic, and social change in the region that has ruptured ecosystems and families. Kazakh pastoralists' musical practices linked to pasture resources and activities, resource diversity, and social-ecological resilience are also associated with social learning and coping with transformations that take place in social-ecological systems. The songs provide access to local ecological knowledge that may offer new approaches to understanding notions of more-than-human well-being for scholars working in collaboration with research partners in local and regional settings.

Songs among the Tlingit of Alaska and Canada are important means for communicating and aligning relationships, knowledges, and emotions among humans, non-human persons, and ancestral lands. As potent expressions of individual and collective identity, heritage, and destiny, songs encapsulate ethnobiological, social, and geographic knowledges in a melodious, interspecific lingua franca. A particular ancestral or communal context, such as a potlatch or u.éex', may call for a spiritual, mournful, or happy song to help effect a transition, for example from mourning to celebration or death to rebirth. Ceremonial songs are typically owned as property and performed by particular Tlingit matrilineal groups, known as clans, or their house groups. However, songs are in the first instance composed by individuals, typically in response to other unique events, such as extraordinary encounters with wildlife, disasters, or other remarkable circumstances. The composers of such songs, both men and women, are respected and honored for their skills. Mary Sheakley (Loo) is one such figure. She composed the song presented here in response to a group of wolves that came to the beach and howled as she and her fellow paddler left their subsistence camp in what is now Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve around the turn of the twentieth century. In 1996, the song was spontaneously remembered by a contemporary elder and younger clan sister to Mary Sheakley, Amy Marvin, who, in turn, taught it to her younger clan daughter during a berry picking trip to Glacier Bay. Later, during that same trip, Amy Marvin deployed the song to cap an impromptu ritual of commemoration for Tlingit relatives that died in a tragic boating accident in the Park in the late twentieth century. The song was thus not only revived but elevated in status to become a “clan song,” which is now considered sacred property (at.óow) and performed during ceremonies, such as the potlatch or u.éex'.

Sakha, a Turkic-speaking people of northeastern Siberia, Russia, practice a circle dance called ohuokhai that is fueled by improvisatory song. Although it is typically bracketed by regular introductory and closing stanzas, its improvisatory middle is a communicative forum for the lead singer to report, critique, and prophesize on issues relevant to the dancers she/he leads. In Soviet times, this middle section often contained expressions of discontent masked by the linguistic complexity of the Sakha language compared to Russian. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the improvisatory texts speak to issues of the environmental crises resulting from the Soviet period and of the increasingly obvious effects of climate change on local lands, ecosystems, and Sakhas' horse and cattle breeding subsistence economy. In this article, I discuss my personal experience with ohuokhai and how it first drew me to work with Viliui Sakha, Sakha living adjacent to the Viliui river and with whom I have collaborated since 1991. My early findings detailed the circle dance's role in Sakha culture and the power it maintained through the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. In this article, I build upon the cultural and historical background I established in my previous research to highlight how ohuokhai can also be considered a perpetuator of biocultural knowledge for the Viliui Sakha. The longitudinal arc of my work with Sakha brings new understandings to ohuokhai, its ethnobiological threads, and its crucial role in transmitting biocultural heritage over generations.

Throughout North America, from the Archaic period (ca. 8000–1000 BC) to the present, Indigenous Peoples used turtle shell rattles in a variety of cultural contexts, including in ceremonies. As a material, turtle shells can be an abundant, accessible, and easily processed raw material, whose shape and size lends itself to be a musical instrument. Many Indigenous Peoples in North America have cosmological, foundational beliefs about turtles. These beliefs provide a greater understanding of why turtle shell rattles are incorporated into ceremonies and dances. Furthermore, they help explain why they are used to keep rhythm, which in turn provides a basis for spiritual energy and experience. This paper reviews the ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological records of turtle shell rattle music in the contiguous United States. Turtle shell rattles are related to spiritual concepts of sound and are culturally defined and contextualized. A comprehensive review of their use reveals insights into the musical knowledge of several ancient and historic communities.

This paper examines the application of song as a herding tool. Based on participant-observation and twenty semi-structured interviews in pastoral encampments in the Gobi Desert over four months, I explore what the practice of singing to sheep can elucidate about interdependent human-animal relationships. The livestock birthing season in rural Mongolia in early spring is a crucial time for humans and animals alike. While pastoralists throughout the country have many different approaches for managing the challenges they face during this time, herders in rural Dundgovi province have a special set of tools for adopting orphaned livestock to new mothers: species-specific, semi-improvisational songs. The herders I work with in this province report that these songs are their primary method for instigating nursing and developing parental bonds between orphaned newborns and foster mothers. This musical practice is interwoven with other forms of traditional musical performance intended for human audiences. This paper contributes to a growing body of literature in ethnobiology that examines the musical capacities of non-humans. I take instances of livestock-singing in the Gobi as opportunities for the creation of mutual empathy between herder and animal. These performances implicate humans in the emotional worlds of sheep and give sheep the role of consumers of music—a position usually reserved for humans.

The transmission of Indigenous Knowledge occurs in large part through the encoding of sociocultural performance of everyday activities, local speech, and other oral manifestations, like stories and songs. Here, we examine the role of traditional songs in transmitting Indigenous Knowledge among the Tsimane' Indigenous Peoples of Bolivian Amazonia. We use the corpus of traditional Tsimane' songs compiled by J. Riester in the 1970s and our ethnographic work on the area over the last two decades to examine the content and context of Tsimane' songs in relation to wildlife and hunting. To understand the role of songs in the transmission of ethnobiological knowledge, our analysis pays attention to how traditional Tsimane' songs transmit information related to wildlife traits and behavior, hunting practices and skills, and cultural norms and beliefs around hunting. Fifty-two of the 140 songs compiled by Riester mention wildlife and/or hunting, featuring a total of 27 different wildlife species. All selected songs include either rich descriptions of wildlife characteristics (e.g., sounds and odors) or information about social practices related to hunting (e.g., arrow crafting and gender roles). We also analyze the content of 12 different ritual songs used to dictate human-animal interactions and teach about inappropriate cultural behaviors in relation to wildlife. Many songs we examined reveal conceptualizations of nature-culture relations that are substantially different from Western concepts. Considering that Tsimane' musical traditions are rapidly waning, we conclude by discussing several options for revitalizing traditional music-making among contemporary Indigenous Peoples exposed to rapid sociocultural changes.

This paper brings together emergent conversations in the disciplines of ethnobiology, anthropology, and ethnomusicology to examine the role of song in human-animal relationships in the context of the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in First Nation in and around Dawson City, Yukon, Canada. Song has always been a critical tool in Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in human-animal interactions, as a powerful means of communicating with or about animals, who are understood to be non-human persons. This paper argues that the particular sentimental and communicative natures of song are mobilized as a means to promote, reinforce, and embody a certain set of relational values in the biocultural lifeways of Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in citizens. Recently Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in are turning to song as a means of negotiating the effects of global climate change, particularly as these critical relationships become more tenuous and unpredictable.