My essay brings cultural ecology together with classical reception studies - two paradigms of cultural theory that have rarely interacted so far, but, as I want to show, fit well together, because both deal with questions of cultural (self-)renewal and the mobility of symbolic forms of meaning making (between culture and nature and between different times and spaces respectively). As analytic examples, I choose three examples of the cultural reception of the myth of Orpheus, since it resonates strongly with cultural ecology and classical reception alike. In order to illustrate the cultural mobility of the myth in modern times, I want to look at African American and African Brazilian contexts in which it has figured prominently as a symbol for black artistic creation. This entails a discussion of the term 'black classicism' that has gained prominence in recent times as post-colonial and poststructuralist approaches have re-negotiated the cultural presumptions upon which the classical tradition rests. As the examples show, the myth is both used as a counter discourse against hegemonic readings of the classics that situate them within a Eurocentric and white context as well as a discourse that valorizes musical and bodily performance against textual practice and that celebrates biophilic life energies.
