Hundreds of tiny hands stretch skyward and turn into fists.
The reason elementary students with faces unmarked by cynicism have adopted the clenched fist salute is twofold: they want their watershed protected and also, it goes with the song.
The Rock the Salish Sea tour – a series of concerts in which elementary students join professional musicians in performing songs about preserving the environment – is the brainchild of singers Kevin Wright and Holly Arntzen.
“There’s so much at stake in our inland ocean right now,” Arntzen says.
The singer seems as comfortable strumming a mandolin as discussing dropping numbers of salmon in the Strait of Georgia (chinook and coho numbers are one-tenth the levels recorded in previous years, according to the Pacific Salmon Foundation).
“Now’s the time, let’s save it!” Arntzen says.
Last night’s concert was set to feature 360 singers from Queen Mary elementary singing along with Arntzen, Wright, bassist Owen Veber and guitarist Arnt Arntzen.
The shows are a fusion of music and ecology as well as a marriage of folk and rock, Arntzen explains.
“I bring in the Joni Mitchell influence, (Wright) brings in the Bon Scott and we meet somewhere in the middle.”
Some of the concerts feature call-and-response portion where Arntzen yells “Water!” and the throng of young voices hollers: “For life!”
The kids generally spend months learning the lyrics and corresponding movements before rehearsing with Arntzen and Wright in the week before the performance.
“If you hear them backstage just before the concert, that’s a sustainable source of energy that could run jet engines,” Arntzen laughs.
The singer jokes about one day writing a manual entitled How to Work with 400 Kids and Never Have to Say ‘Be Quiet.’
Part of the kids’ co-operation is due to their appreciation of the music, she says.
“Kids love rock ‘n’ roll, they just do.”
Loud music has often represented a chasm between generations and political points of view.
In 1956, a Baptist reverend judged Elvis Presley “morally insane.” Last February, a republican congressman declared Beyoncé’s Super Bowl performance “anti-police.”
For Arntzen, music is a way to inform the young and inspire the old – or maybe it’s the other way around.
“Not only are children learning about nature, they’re sharing and celebrating that knowledge with the adult members of their families,” she says. “We’re trying to give people many different ways to connect to their children, to their schools, to their communities, to their watersheds.”
Much like pop musicians use their concerts to drive fans to consume more, Arntzen uses the stage to push her audience to consume less.
Previous shows have been replete with tips for utilizing rainwater and keeping a pitcher of water in the fridge to avoid wasts while waiting for the tap to get cold.
The Rock the Salish Sea tour comes with its own set of tasks.
“All of us who live in these watersheds around the Salish Sea, we have a job to do,” Arntzen explains. “We’re asking people to take your tires to Northshore Tire on May 21 because it gets those tires out of vacant lot and stream beds and off beaches and out of backyards.”
Asked about her decision to marry environmentalism with music, Arntzen laughs.
“It was a very organic evolution,” she says.
The granddaughter of a fisherman and the former wife of the late scientist and activist Stephen Foster, Arntzen started writing songs with environmental messages in the late 1980s.
She regularly absorbed lectures from environmental activists whose speeches provided some of the content for her songs.
These days, Arntzen is trying to spread the word about global warming’s effect on the ocean.
While the ocean has only warmed by a tenth of a degree, a recent National Geographic article suggested even that miniscule change results in stronger storms and higher sea levels, as well as wreaking havoc on coral and thereby jeopardizing barrier reefs.
For Arntzen, the great hope is that if she does her job well, more people will think about how they live and for whom they vote.
“We really hope people go away having been touched by the children singing,” she says. “That’s what we, people on land, can do.”
The tour continues in Victoria and Campbell River this June.
