Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share 42. Songs, Microbiome and Music as a Tool for Education: Charlie Mgee on Permaculture Herbalism
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
42. Songs, Microbiome and Music as a Tool for Education: Charlie Mgee on Permaculture Herbalism
Charlie Mgee is a songwriter, ukulele player, permaculturist and founder of the world-renowned ecological funk/swing band, Formidable Vegetable. Growing up in a tin shed with a veggie garden, rainwater tank and one 100W solar panel for power in the south-west of Western Australia, Charlie lived the low-impact lifestyle from a young age, using a 'Dunny' that didn't flush and hanging out with his chickens for entertainment, which made him realise early on that you don’t need a lot in life to be happy.
Later on, Charlie went off to study permaculture and, soon after, formed Formidable Vegetable – a band based entirely around principles of sustainable living and being good to the planet, with the hope of inspiring people everywhere to grow regenerative gardens/lives/communities and generally make the world a better place.
In this episode, Charlie shares his earlier childhood years living in Arnhem land and how this time influenced his perspective of music as a pattern language, and the powerful experiences he had listening to the traditional songs as a way of knowing and remembering, to propagate culture.
Our conversation explores his career as a musician, how he came to use it as a tool for education and why he believes that real change is going to happen at a community level with local and bioregional scale solutions. We touch on topics such as; diversity in our landscapes and gut microbiome, the soil food web, and staying healthy on tour with some special medicinal plants.
Charlie's music has since made it into the United Nations (who praised Formidable Vegetable for writing about the 'important issues of our time'), onto the stages at Glastonbury Festival alongside such acts as Ed Sheeran, Katy Perry and The Rolling Stones and has inspired the creation of many a backyard and community garden.
Fresh from a sold-out national tour, Formidable Vegetable is back with some all-new Spoonbill-boosted electro-funk and positive climate action that the whole neighbourhood can get down to as they launch their brand new album 'Micro Biome' - an organic harvest of family-flavoured beets to inspire young and old to connect to the beyond-human World.
SHOW NOTES:
CONTACT:
Website: www.formidablevegetable.com.au and http://growdoit.com.au
Facebook: http://facebook.com/formidablevegetable (and Grow Do It Permaculture Education group on FB)
Instagram: http://instagram.com/formidableveg
Other/s: www.patreon.com/growdoit
To find out more about The Elder Tree visit the website at www.theeldertree.org and donate to the crowdfunding campaign here.
You can also follow The Elder Tree on Facebook and Instagram and sign up to the newsletter.
Find out more about this podcast and the presenters here. Get in touch with The Elder Tree at: [email protected]
The intro and outro song is "Sing for the Earth" and was kindly donated by Chad Wilkins. You can find Chad's music here and here.
View all episodes
By The Elder TreeCharlie Mgee is a songwriter, ukulele player, permaculturist and founder of the world-renowned ecological funk/swing band, Formidable Vegetable. Growing up in a tin shed with a veggie garden, rainwater tank and one 100W solar panel for power in the south-west of Western Australia, Charlie lived the low-impact lifestyle from a young age, using a 'Dunny' that didn't flush and hanging out with his chickens for entertainment, which made him realise early on that you don’t need a lot in life to be happy.
Later on, Charlie went off to study permaculture and, soon after, formed Formidable Vegetable – a band based entirely around principles of sustainable living and being good to the planet, with the hope of inspiring people everywhere to grow regenerative gardens/lives/communities and generally make the world a better place.
In this episode, Charlie shares his earlier childhood years living in Arnhem land and how this time influenced his perspective of music as a pattern language, and the powerful experiences he had listening to the traditional songs as a way of knowing and remembering, to propagate culture.
Our conversation explores his career as a musician, how he came to use it as a tool for education and why he believes that real change is going to happen at a community level with local and bioregional scale solutions. We touch on topics such as; diversity in our landscapes and gut microbiome, the soil food web, and staying healthy on tour with some special medicinal plants.
Charlie's music has since made it into the United Nations (who praised Formidable Vegetable for writing about the 'important issues of our time'), onto the stages at Glastonbury Festival alongside such acts as Ed Sheeran, Katy Perry and The Rolling Stones and has inspired the creation of many a backyard and community garden.
Fresh from a sold-out national tour, Formidable Vegetable is back with some all-new Spoonbill-boosted electro-funk and positive climate action that the whole neighbourhood can get down to as they launch their brand new album 'Micro Biome' - an organic harvest of family-flavoured beets to inspire young and old to connect to the beyond-human World.
SHOW NOTES:
CONTACT:
Website: www.formidablevegetable.com.au and http://growdoit.com.au
Facebook: http://facebook.com/formidablevegetable (and Grow Do It Permaculture Education group on FB)
Instagram: http://instagram.com/formidableveg
Other/s: www.patreon.com/growdoit
To find out more about The Elder Tree visit the website at www.theeldertree.org and donate to the crowdfunding campaign here.
You can also follow The Elder Tree on Facebook and Instagram and sign up to the newsletter.
Find out more about this podcast and the presenters here. Get in touch with The Elder Tree at: [email protected]
The intro and outro song is "Sing for the Earth" and was kindly donated by Chad Wilkins. You can find Chad's music here and here.