Robin Wall Kimmerer on “Singing Land”

We had the honor of interviewing author and botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, recipient of the 2023 National Humanities Medal. Kimmerer wrote the libretto for Singing Land, a new piece commissioned by the Jupiter String Quartet with music by composer Su Lian Tan. The Jupiter String Quartet and UI Chamber Singers will premiere Singing Land on Sunday, January 26 at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.

A mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer is the author of the award-winning books Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (2013) and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses (2003). The 2022 MacArthur Fellow lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology and the founder/director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Her latest book, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, was released in November.

Kimmerer’s work explores the intersection of Western scientific research and Indigenous ecological knowledge. Across her writing, she promotes the idea of learning from nature to reorient our economy around gratitude and reciprocity instead of unchecked consumption and exploitation of nature. She hopes that by examining the delicate web of relationships that exist within ecosystems, we recognize our own interdependence and work to preserve it.

Singing Land echoes these themes of ecological reciprocity. Kimmerer had not written a libretto before when composer Su Lian Tan contacted her about contributing the text for this new piece. Her writing had been excerpted and adapted by other composers, but she had never written anything expressly for musical setting. Excited by the challenge, she said, “It was really fun for me to explore this new way of communicating.”

The creative process was truly collaborative with Tan, who helped Kimmerer tailor and winnow her ideas. “For me, it was all about sounds,” Kimmerer said of her approach to writing text that would be sung. “It’s very much a piece about listening to the land and singing back to the land. The whole process was entering into the sound of the words and also the pacing so that there would be dark spots and illuminated places as well.”

Singing Land not only celebrates the beauty of the natural world but also forces the audience to recognize the destruction we have wrought. The work ends on a positive note, however. Kimmerer explained, “It ends with, let’s remember who we could be. Let’s remember how joyful it would be for the land to be grateful for us instead of destroyed by us.”

“I think in this time of being on the edge of climate catastrophe, in the age of the sixth extinction, one of the things that is powerful—that I feel like music can do better than any other medium—is to bring us to grief for ecological grief,” Kimmerer said. But she stresses that grief is not all bad but rather “a measure of our love for the world”—a powerful tool that can move us to act.

As a scientist by training and profession, Kimmerer never expected to become renowned for her contributions to the humanities. Her second book, Braiding Sweetgrass, had a modest debut when it was published in 2013 but sold steadily year after year. In February 2020, it entered the New York Times best-seller list, where it has remained for 244 weeks as of this writing. Her star has continued to rise ever since. 

The premiere of Singing Land was originally scheduled for October 20, 2024, but Kimmerer, who was slated to do a pre-concert discussion and read excerpts of her work during the performance, was called to the White House to receive the 2023 National Humanities Medal.

“I was so surprised and delighted by that recognition,” she said. During the ceremony, she was moved by the words of President Biden, who spoke of the importance of the arts and humanities as tools of cultural change. Receiving this honor reinforced to her that she was making a meaningful contribution to the world through her writing.

For Kimmerer, the scientific and artistic aspects of her career are two sides of the same coin and inform each other. She spoke of “the privilege of being a scientist and listening to the natural world in the way that the tools of science allow us to do,” which she has been able to couple with her gift for storytelling to both educate and inspire.

She hopes that Singing Land similarly moves audiences to recognize the imperative of environmental action when scientific facts alone fail to make an impression. “There is a line in the libretto: ‘What will it be like when we realize what we have done?’” Kimmerer said. “What I hope the music ignites is that moment of recognizing what we have done and being moved from that place toward healing.”

Catch the premiere of Su Lian Tan and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Singing Land performed by the Jupiter String Quartet and UI Chamber Singers at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday, January 26. If you purchased tickets for the original performance date on October 20, your tickets will still be valid for the new date. In the meantime, revisit our interview with the Jupiter String Quartet here.