Papaphilia On Music As An Ecology: ‘So Many Elements Play A Role In Growth, Death, And Peace’

Papaphilia (aka Fjorn Bastos) is one of the most exciting artists in Australian dance music – her live shows, for reference, are described as “multidisciplinary, multi-sensory experiences where music and movement are intertwined”. And that’s not wanky PR copy… Well it is PR copy, but it’s not wanky, because here the description is entirely apt: Bastos uses music to create the unique universes – these singular moments in space and time – where the listener can truly connect with her art in a way unlike anything else.

Back in March, Bastos released the mesmerising music video for All Are Syllables Of The Great Tongue, the soul-moving closer to her most recent album, Remembrance Of Things To Come. That record – minted in tandem with producers Kuya Neil and Various Asses – arrived in October of 2021, and went on to earn a nomination for Best Electronic Work at last year’s Music Victoria Awards.

As she continues building her artistry towards previously unimaginable heights, Bastos took some time off to write a deeply personal and explorative essay for Purple Sneakers, opening up on her perspective towards music as an ecology. You can read it below, and keep up to date with Papaphilia on Facebook and Instagram.

Music As An Ecology
by Papaphilia

When I say music is an ‘ecology’, really I am talking about not only music but all forms of creative practice – any form of creative or collective output can only occur as a collaboration between a wide range of people, both actively and passively.  

An ecology is a system in which we as people are embedded. If we are to take a decolonial approach to unpacking this, we are first and foremost deprioritising the human in that system, in order to overcome this wretched idea that humans can be separated from their ecology, or imagined as superior to it, having a godlike access to extract from it.    

Instead we need to look at the ecology as a whole: all entities in it are existing, moving, actioning, resting, reproducing; we see a system of interactions, of support as well as competition, but it is a system where so many elements play a role in growth, death, and peace.  

Just like any ecosystem, our creative environments are webs of interconnected people, as well as animals and other entities. We are all tied together, and as such one action can reverberate throughout that whole system. Usually we only see the results or output of it – say a live show, for example. But always there is a wide range of people making that happen: a venue, a producer, the artists, the attendees, the systems like transport that allow those to physically attend that site, the people who have given you knowledge to keep you safe on that journey...

There’s even a world of imaginative development that led each audience member to the world of music, and to attend a live show in the first place.  

We are all fragments in a long line of inheritance that led to the current formation that is us, you, your physicality – you are one blip in a timeless reordering of substance from which you came.