A collection of anthropological field recordings documenting the early musical traditions of the first generation of solarpunk homesteaders circa 2031.

I visited four communities while gathering performances for this first volume of the anthology.

Mission Farm is a community of produce growers who live in and around an old Spanish Mission in rural New Mexico. The mission's resident librarian also does most of the local welding work. Her welding show piece is a custom built clarion which fills the mission's bell tower. It includes 100s of chimes, bells, and gongs. She is the only person who knows how to play this vast musical instrument she built from scrap metal. I visited during the monthly potluck, recording the breakfast, lunch, and supper calls.

The nearby Honey Cavern Beekeeper's Guild is a co-op operating hundreds of hives out of a cave system. Besides pollinating scores of farms in the area, the monkish beekeepers also collect honey, wax, and new queens which they sell at market. The guild seems to have a song for every activity. I included three of them here.

Market Square Busking Mob is an ill-defined art collective that occasionally forms somewhat organically on very busy market days in the village (like when the Guild is selling mead). Various smaller busking groups, rather than compete for space and attention, come together to form a super group. Stylistically, it is hard to pin down the music that happens in these moments. The primary trait I'll note here is that when you have that many metal drum players ... the tuned drum notes can be used for functional harmony type chord progressions of a complexity typically only seen in traditional American Jazz music.

Moving into a wetter climate, the Delta Raft Gathering is an event that happens a few times a year. Scores of families pole well over 100 rafts, small barges, houseboats, pontoon boats, fishing boats, and fan boats together into a flotilla at the center of a still deep water lake. Rope bridges and gangplanks link it all together into a temporary fairground for the weekend. These communities can be very isolated most of the time, so as you can imagine ... when they do get together it is a wonderful celebration of great food, old friends, music, and bartering with distant neighbors.