Songs for our soils. How soil themes have been represented in popular song

The soil–culture relationship has been investigated from various points of view. Surprisingly, however, there is a marked absence of papers investigating the way such a fragile resource has been represented in popular song. Many lyrics disclose how such a resource is lived, perceived, represented, and objectified in everyday human life by ordinary people. This paper observes that many of the greatest songwriters and interpreters on the international scene, from all musical genres, have dealt with soil, often from innovative and audacious perspectives. From the prosaic metaphor of the life cycle or as a medium for crops, the soil resource has also been cast as a means of pain, sacrifice, or even redemption. Sometimes seen as a secret world, a helpless creature, treated with a visionary or yet psychedelic approach, the soil has been represented in myriad ways. During the1970s, several protest songs, which had the ability to raise awareness and mobilize millions of people in favor of the environmentalists cause, were based on ideological positions closely connected to soil issues, such as soil sealing and erosion. These (soil) songs are now considered the first environmentalist songs in the history of music. As soil scientists, we have often serious problems in communicating soil issues for a global audience, and, consequently, the worldwide political agenda often shows a dramatic lack of interest in such concerns. It is perhaps surprising that popular songs have still not become more common methods for sharing, educating, and sensitizing ordinary people, students, and scholars from every field of study, about soil concerns. Without trying to claim it as some sort of panacea, popular song (as already understood by ecologists and climatologists) can represent a powerful means of increasing public visibility and awareness about soil resource.