14 - Ecological Entanglements: Following the Electric Guitar from Factory to Forest

Summary

This chapter considers how the electric guitar is entwined with ecological issues—materially, culturally, and politically. Its first section discusses the electric guitar’s composite materials—metals, plastics, and especially woods—linking them to upstream impacts, legal and environmental conflicts. Disrupting the industry are environmental problems that interrupt material resource supply, including species endangerments, trade restrictions, and climate change. The second section considers new sustainability initiatives amid growing resource insecurity and a changing climate. Attempts at ecological recuperation encompass diversification of timbers, forest restoration, salvage supply chains, new materials, and urban tree planting schemes. The third section turns to guitar players, asking questions of how, as musicians, we find ourselves entwined within, and in many ways responsible for, the instrument’s ecological dilemmas. Throughout the chapter, we draw upon our long-standing research project tracing the guitar “in rewind” back to forest origins, including interview quotes from wood experts in the guitar industry that we have interviewed across the globe.