Priya Parrotta
historian & musician
for the earth
About
Priya Parrotta is a historian, songwriter/composer, singer, multimedia artist and author dedicated to furthering environmental consciousness across borders. She is the Founder and Director of Music & the Earth International, an initiative which fosters ecological understanding, multicultural solidarity, and healing through research, writing, live events, and original music. 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 traverse persistent boundaries, heal from historical injustice, and unite to protect the ecosystems we love. Her scholarly work draws from a diversity of fields, from environmental history to political ecology to cultural geography. Her music, meanwhile, seeks to celebrate and restore the emotional, aesthetic and spiritual connections between humanity and the biosphere.
Priya wrote her first book, The Politics of Coexistence in the Atlantic World, when she was twenty-five years old; and her second, completed manuscript is titled To Dream Again: Island Environmentalism through Music. Her current research project is titled The Paradise Industry: Law, Ecology, Media and the Making of Waikīkī Beach, 1890-1930. She has also written, recorded and produced five albums of original music dedicated to the small, the meek and the wise: the soul of our one, beautiful planet. Priya is a global citizen in the truest sense: She grew up in Puerto Rico and Washington, DC, with close ancestral and personal ties to India and Italy.
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 is now writing a doctoral dissertation at the University of Aberdeen's School of Divinity, History and Philosophy. She has also taken courses in fields such as environmental law and policy, international affairs, political ecology, nonprofit management, online education, ethnomusicology, and music therapy.
Priya has worked for a range of cultural, political and environmental institutions, including the Smithsonian and the Red Cross. She has also worked as an organizer with GreenFaith, a global interfaith climate network, and was a Founding Leader of The Sanctuaries, the first multifaith arts collective in the US. She currently lives in Washington, DC. In her free time, she loves to take long walks, lose track of time in bookstores and cafés, and dance.