Priya Parrotta, PhD
historian & musician
for the earth
About
Dr. Priya Parrotta is an environmental historian, composer and singer whose work dismantles and transcends borders to unite humans with each other and the more-than-human world. She is the Founder and Director of Music & the Earth International, an academic and artistic initiative which explores and celebrates the role of music in fostering environmental dialogue across borders. Priya is a Senior Fellow with the Safina Center, a United States Artists Fellowship nominee, and an elected member of the Royal Historical Society.
Priya believes firmly in the possibility of a world in which we are able to traverse persistent boundaries, heal from historical injustice, and unite to protect the ecosystems we love. As a scholar, Priya seeks to understand the art and practice of coexistence, amidst the complexities of the modern world. Her first book, The Politics of Coexistence in the Atlantic World, published at the age of twenty-five, explores the ways in which colonial divides in the Caribbean were subverted by the cultural pluralism which so defines this region. She has written a collection of essays, which she uses as a reader in her courses, titled To Dream Again: Island Environmentalism through Music. She also recently completed an extensive archival study titled The Paradise Industry: The Making of Waikīkī Beach, 1890-1930, which details how relations of reciprocity in the coastal neighborhood of Waikīkī, Hawai'i, were fractured as a small group of commercial elites created the beach tourism industry in the late Gilded Age.
Priya’s original music draws upon her extensive engagement with music from South Asia, Latin America and the Mediterranean; her training as a classical vocalist; and her love of genres such as jazz and soul. She has written, sung and produced albums which sweep across the world’s diverse musical genres, and celebrate the varied connections between humanity and the biosphere. Her internationally acclaimed songs express environmental critiques, hopes, and calls to action in ways that resonate across geographical, cultural and social divides. She has also recorded over one hundred covers, dedicated to sensitivity and kindness. Through her music, she seeks to support a healing planetary consciousness in our fragmented and anthropocentric world.
Priya was educated in History (Colonialism & Globalization) and Music at Brown University, and briefly studied as a postgrad at the University of Oxford's School of Geography and the Environment. She also studied opera with Soprano Margarita Castro Alberty. She holds a PhD in History, completed in two and a half years, from the University of Aberdeen’s School of Divinity, History and Philosophy. Priya has previously worked for the Smithsonian and the Red Cross; has collaborated with the Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico on one-of-a-kind programming to bring global environmentalism into the world of classical music; and was a Founding Leader of The Sanctuaries, the first multifaith arts collective in the US.
A multicultural, world citizen with roots in India and Italy, Priya was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and lives in Washington, DC. She is a lifelong Yoga practitioner who seeks to live by the principles of discipline and devotion to peace on this Earth. In that spirit, she recently launched the World Vegan Project, dedicated to fostering multiculturalism within the global vegan movement. Her hobbies include plant-based cooking, café loitering, and learning diverse styles of dance.