An Earth anthem is a celebratory song or a musical composition that eulogizes, extols or exalts planet Earth.
An Earth anthem is a celebratory song or a musical composition that eulogizes, extols or exalts planet Earth.
"Voices for Today" is a song composed by Benjamin Britten in 1965 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the foundation of the United Nations. The lyrics are based on Virgil’s fourth Eclogue. [1] [2] [3]
On the request of then United Nations Secretary-General U Thant, a "Hymn to the United Nations" was performed on the occasion of its 26th anniversary, on October 24, 1971, by Pablo Casals, the lyrics to which were penned by the poet W. H. Auden. [4] [5]
In January 2014, Abhay K. of the United Nations Permanent Delegation of India cited a need for a global anthem. [6] While UNESCO's assistant director general Éric Falt agreed it was necessary but claimed UNESCO "lack[ed the] resources to organize an online global competition to select an Earth Anthem". [6]
There are a number of songs or a musical composition that eulogizes, extols or exalts the planet Earth.
In 1968, The Turtles released "Earth Anthem" on their fourth studio album, The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands. In 2003, Dan Fogelberg covered this as the last song of his album, Full Circle. [7] [8]
"Mother Earth (Natural Anthem)" by Neil Young, "Earth Song" by Michael Jackson, [9] "Earth" by Lil Dicky, and "Earth Anthem" by Abhay Kumar are other examples of popular music with Earth as a theme. [10] [11]
In 1990, lyricist Barbara Lee George first performed the "Earth Day Anthem" with the Children’s Chorus of Sussex County, [12] sung to the tune of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy". [13] [14] [15] New York state congressman Benjamin Gilman recommended that the United States adopt it as the official Earth anthem. It was nominated for a Marcus Nobel United Earth Prize in 1992. [12] George's song was first recorded in 2015 in collaboration with guitarist Al Orlo, producer John Lissauer, and singer Vaneese Thomas among others. [12]
In November of 2010, the UFO religion Universe People's website published an instrumental "New Earth Anthem". [16]
In 2012, Andrew Huang wrote a pop song titled "When The Lights Go Down" for WWF-Canada. This Earth Hour anthem contained lyrics such as "Protecting the Earth is our message". [17] [18]
The world music ensemble, Libana, has recorded multiple songs dedicated to the Earth. Recorded in 1986, "Ancient Mother" and "The Earth is Our Mother" chants were part of Songs of the Sacred Wheel. [19] [20] [21] [22] Their 2024 single, "Gaia Now", addresses the effects of climate change with lyrics such as "Wake up now, the Earth is flooding, rise up and protect her / Cry about your mama, she's our home, she is our mother". [23]
In 1996, Denver composer John Guillot was working on a compilation CD of national anthems when he "conceived of a single piece of music based on the common notes and tendencies of all of the world’s national anthems". [24] It was not meant to replace any anthem but rather to "bring its message of peace and understanding across national borderlines". [24]
In 2000, Guillot worked with professor David Cope at the University of California, Santa Cruz, whose artificial musical intelligence program Experiments in Musical Intelligence (EMI) was able to generate a conglomeration of songs based on commonalities in lyrics and sheet music (such
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 World Anthem by Mindshare |
as phrases, notes, and melodies). Using files created by composer Stephen Bigger, "Guillot and Cope entered the [national anthems] into the program and the result was the words and music of 'The World Anthem'", which was completed by the year 2000. [24] The Tommy E. Short Charitable Foundation provided a grant of an unknown sum to create an international recording. [24] The music was recorded by an orchestra in Prague with vocals from Los Angeles. [24]
The recording was first publicly heard at Denver, Colorado's millennium celebration on Dec. 31, 2000, "at the stroke of midnight" in conjunction with New Years' Eve fireworks. [25]
The first live performance was in November 2001, by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. [24] [25]
In 2001, it was performed in the 40th anniversary celebration of the Peace Corps in Washington D.C. [24]
Circa 2002, the "World Anthem" was published by the Mindshare Institute and Foundation and used by the Praxis Peace Institute in Croatia. [24] [26] The same year, it was performed in the Poudre High School commencement and graduation at Moby Arena at CSU. There, it was met with some criticism, such as by radio commentators Mike Rosen and Peter Boyles, as well as letters to the editors of CSU publications. Opponents, who were usually parents of the students, claimed they were "offended" the American national anthem was not played instead. [26] [25]
In 2006, the United States Air Force Academy Band published its performance of the "World Anthem", [27] conducted by Philip Chevallard and arranged by Joseph T. Spaniola. [28] [29]
The music video was uploaded to YouTube in 2007. [30] The MindShare Institute of Fort Collins hired producer Brian Doubleday to contact more than 200 photographers around the world to contribute "faces of humanity" for the video. [24]
Since at least 2011, Reverend Billy and the Earthalujah Choir has performed in front of the Blue Marble flag, singing joyous songs that celebrate environmentalism and anti-consumerism. [31]
In 2020, Reverend Billy & The Stop Shopping Choir premiered "Earthalujah!", a rearrangement of the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's 1714 oratorio, Messiah . It was arranged by Nehemiah Luckett and Gregory Corbino with lyrics by Billy Talen. [32]
Written in 2019, "The Resolution Song (The World on Our Shoulders)" is an ongoing global song project, made in collaboration with Music Declares Emergency. The song invites covers, celebrates human cultures, and declares humanity's shared responsibility to preserve the environment. [33]
Individuals from the World Wide Fund for Nature, Decca, and Extinction Rebellion began work on the project, with the goal of "people in every country in the world singing the same song". [33] The song was composed in a workshop by Violet Skies, Låpsley, and Robin Howl, who purposely made its arrangement and lyrics public domain and downloadable. Afterwards, volunteers reached out to musicians worldwide to cover the song. [33]
It premiered at the December 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference. [34] Since then, it has been sung by thousands of people in over 100 countries. [35] Its goal was to call for governments to enact New Year's resolutions to resolve the climate crisis. [34] In 2022, NME described the song as a "call for peace, unity, global harmony and action on climate" that celebrates the diversity of human culture. [36]
According to Planet Resolution, there is "at least one version of the song from every country on Earth". [37] Project lead Abbey Wright summarized some global performers in 2022: [33]
From a girl band in Benin to a drill group in Brazzaville, Congo to the Kuikuro people in the Amazon; a Mongolian nomadic herder, the Georgian State Opera Chorus, panpipers from the Solomon Islands and refugees from Eritrea, Iran and Syria. The song has been sung on the frontlines of climate change in San Andrés, Mozambique, the Marshall Islands, the Antarctic, Haiti and The Maldives...In Sierra Leone, a group of street kids sing the song, as well as people from slums in Uganda, Kenya and the brilliant Recycled Orchestra from Paraguay, who make instruments from rubbish and teach music to children from Cateura... [33]
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| "Resolution Song", a conglomeration of video entries edited by Planet Resolution, 2022 |
Celebrity supporters of the project include Emma Thompson, Keira Knightley, Naomie Harris, Bill Bailey, Jodie Whittaker, and Mark Rylance. [38] Notable performers of the Resolution Song include: [36] [38]
An anthem is a musical composition of celebration, usually used as a symbol for a distinct group, particularly the national anthems of countries. Originally, and in music theory and religious contexts, it also refers more particularly to short sacred choral work and still more particularly to a specific form of liturgical music. In this sense, its use began c. 1550 in English-speaking churches; it uses English language words, in contrast to the originally Roman Catholic 'motet' which sets a Latin text.
A national anthem is a patriotic musical composition symbolizing and evoking eulogies of the history and traditions of a country or nation. The majority of national anthems are marches or hymns in style. American, Central Asian, and European nations tend towards more ornate and operatic pieces, while those in the Middle East, Oceania, Africa, and the Caribbean use a more simplistic fanfare. Some countries that are devolved into multiple constituent states have their own official musical compositions for them ; their constituencies' songs are sometimes referred to as national anthems even though they are not sovereign states.
"Meda Dau Doka", or "God Bless Fiji", is the national anthem of Fiji. The lyrics were written by Michael Francis Alexander Prescott (1928–2006) to the tune of the hymn "Dwelling in Beulah Land" by Charles Austin Miles (1911), and the music was adapted by Viliame Bale, Superintendent and Director of Music in the Royal Fiji Police Band. The anthem was adopted upon independence from the United Kingdom in 1970.
The State Anthem of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic was the national anthem of Armenia when it was a republic of the Soviet Union and known as the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. It was used between 1944 and 1991. Its music was composed by Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian, and the lyrics were written by Sarmen. Along with the Anthem of the Estonian SSR, it is one of the only two SSR anthems without an intro.
"Tautiška giesmė" or "Lietuvos himnas", also known by its incipit "Lietuva, Tėvyne mūsų", is the national anthem of Lithuania. The music and lyrics were written in 1898 by Vincas Kudirka, when Lithuania was still part of the Russian Empire. The fifty-word poem was a condensation of Kudirka's conceptions of the Lithuanian state, the Lithuanian people, and their past. Shortly before his death in 1899, the anthem was performed for Lithuanians living in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
"God Save Our Solomon Islands" is the national anthem of Solomon Islands. It was adopted in 1978 following independence. The lyrics were authored by Fijian-born husband and wife Panapasa and Matila Balekana, and the music was composed by Panapasa.
World Ocean Day (WOD) is an international day that takes place annually on 8 June. The concept was originally proposed in 1992 by Canada's International Centre for Ocean Development (ICOD) and the Ocean Institute of Canada (OIC) at the Earth Summit – UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Ocean Project started global coordination of World Ocean Day starting in 2002. "World Oceans Day" was officially recognised by the United Nations in 2008. The international day supports the implementation of worldwide Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and fosters public interest in the protection of the ocean and the sustainable management of its resources. World Oceans Day is observed by all UN member states.
Religion and environmentalism is an emerging interdisciplinary subfield in the academic disciplines of religious studies, religious ethics, the sociology of religion, and theology amongst others, with environmentalism and ecological principles as a primary focus.
References to climate change in popular culture have existed since the late 20th century and increased in the 21st century. Climate change, its impacts, and related human-environment interactions have been featured in nonfiction books and documentaries, but also literature, film, music, television shows and video games.
Earth Hour is a worldwide movement organized by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The event is held annually, encouraging the individuals, communities, and businesses to give an hour for Earth, and additionally marked by landmarks and businesses switching off non-essential electric lights, for one hour from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., usually on the last Saturday of March, as a symbol of commitment to the planet. It was started as a lights-off event in Sydney, Australia, in 2007.
"Hey You" is a charity song written and recorded by American singer Madonna. She co-produced the song with Pharrell Williams for the Live Earth campaign. It was released digitally on May 24, 2007 and was available on the CD and DVD of the Live Earth concerts on December 4, 2007. Musically it is a stripped-down, folksy ballad with straightforward, anthem-like lyrics talking about how to save the world from destruction. The song received generally mixed reviews, with one group of reviewers commenting that the modest message of the song was uninspiring while others called the song sweet and commended Madonna's commitment to charity.
"Ode to the Motherland" is a patriotic song of the People's Republic of China, written and music composed by Wang Shen during the period immediately after the founding of the People's Republic of China (1949–1951). It is sometimes honoured as "the second national anthem" of the PRC. The song has been performed in major sporting events in the opening ceremonies during China's entry in the parade of nations, such as the 2008 Summer Olympics, the 2019 Military World Games, the 2021 Summer World University Games as well as the 2022 Winter Olympics and 2022 Asian Games.
Earth Overshoot Day (EOD) is the calculated illustrative calendar date on which humanity's resource consumption for the year exceeds Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year. In 2024, it fell on August 1st. The term "overshoot" represents the level by which human population's demand overshoots the sustainable amount of biological resources regenerated on Earth. When viewed through an economic perspective, the annual Earth Overshoot Day represents the day by which the planet's annual regenerative budget is spent, and humanity enters environmental deficit spending. Earth Overshoot Day is calculated by dividing the world biocapacity, by the world ecological footprint, and multiplying by 365, the number of days in a year:
The World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought is a United Nations observance celebrated each year on 17 June. Its purpose is to raise awareness of the presence of desertification and drought, highlighting methods of preventing desertification and recovering from drought. Each year's global celebration has a unique, novel emphasis that had not been developed previously.
The Voyager Golden Record contains 116 images and a variety of sounds. The items for the record, which is carried on both the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft, were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University. Included are natural sounds, musical selections from different cultures and eras, spoken greetings in 59 languages, human sounds like footsteps and laughter, and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.
The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21 or CMP 11 was held in Paris, France, from 30 November to 12 December 2015. It was the 21st yearly session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 11th session of the Meeting of the Parties (CMP) to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
Copilot Music and Sound LLC is a New York-based music content and strategy company launched in 2008 by partners Jason Menkes and Ravi Krishnaswami. Copilot provides music production, music composition, music licensing, sonic branding, sound design, and creative consultation services throughout the television, gaming, film, advertising, and interactive industries.
The 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP25, was the 25th United Nations Climate Change conference. It was held in Madrid, Spain, from 2 to 13 December 2019 under the presidency of the Chilean government. The conference incorporated the 25th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the 15th meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP15), and the second meeting of the parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA2).
Lindsey Marie Coffey is an American fashion model, and beauty pageant titleholder who was crowned Miss Earth 2020. This made her the first US entry to win the Miss Earth title.
Luminous: The Symphony of Us is a fireworks-based nighttime spectacular at EPCOT at Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida. A successor to both IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth and Harmonious, Luminous showcases and celebrates the passage of life, cultures, and customs shared across global communities. The show features synchronized pyrotechnics, choreographed water fountains, lasers, searchlights, and fire torches to present a 360° audio-visual experience on the park's World Showcase Lagoon.
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