Decolonization, Music, and Pedagogy: An Introduction
This issue's title, “Decolonizing Music Pedagogies,” carries two distinct meanings. The more apparent is the act or intention of decolonizing the teaching methods employed in university music programs. The second points toward the creation of pedagogies capable of performing decolonizing work through their use in music courses. Neither interpretation offers ready-made methodologies or materials, leaving numerous questions unanswered. What does decolonizing music pedagogies entail? What approaches work best, and which should be avoided? What might new music pedagogies that enact decolonization look like? Where do we start, and how do we sustain momentum?
This special issue provides several responses to these questions about decolonization, while acknowledging that many more approaches exist. A single, fixed definition of decolonization is impossible, given the range of critical positions found in theory and practice worldwide. More importantly, a monolithic definition is not a goal we consider desirable. In our understanding, decolonization functions as a process rather than a product; our varied and evolving experiences, contexts, positions, and discussions can profoundly shape both individual and shared understandings. The twelve contributing authors each offer their own interpretations of decolonizing pedagogies. We value this plurality, especially the two Indigenous voices included. However, as co-editors, we recognize that many perspectives remain absent from this issue's conversations. The collection leans local rather than global, includes only one article in French, and most authors are anglophone and many are white. We hope that the articles presented here will encourage many more voices to participate in ongoing dialogue about pedagogy, scholarship, and decolonial teaching. Our sincere gratitude goes to Beverley Diamond and Alan Dodson for their comments on this introduction, to the eighteen anonymous peer reviewers, the editorial team, and the MusCan Board for their support and assistance.
We write as two white settler Canadian academics—one a musicologist and ethnomusicologist (Margaret), the other a music theorist and educational developer (Robin). Our experiences both inside and outside academia, as well as our intersectional identities, shape our perspectives. These identities have included marginalized and mainstream positions within our disciplines and the broader society. We share the privileged backgrounds common to many musicians in the academy: government-supported music classes in school, often costly private lessons in Western art music, and supportive middle-class families that took us to elite performances and encouraged higher education. We both earned post-secondary degrees at Canadian universities and now work at Queen's University in Kingston, on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabek and Haudenosaunee peoples. Our paths to advocating for decolonization in music pedagogies differ considerably, but rather than detailing those stories here, we prefer to focus on you, the reader. In particular, we encourage those new to these ideas to join the discussion.
When we issued the call for papers for this special issue in fall 2018, COVID-19 did not yet exist, and a pandemic seemed the stuff of dystopian fiction. Between March and May 2020, however, it often appeared as though few other legitimate concerns remained. Yet as we, like countless teachers across Canada and the United States, struggled with emergency teaching adjustments, we were constantly reminded of the importance of evaluating our music-teaching practices within the context of settler colonialism. Over this issue's development, numerous global, national, local, and personal events have pulled our minds and hearts in different directions. Protests in solidarity with Indigenous struggles for sovereignty, demonstrations against anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism and police violence, the sudden shift to remote teaching, and public health lockdowns—all these occurrences could have sidetracked us. Instead, they sharpened our original intentions. Educational decolonization, with its critical recognition of persistent power imbalances, epistemological assumptions, and marginalization of experience within the academy, remains a crucial and ongoing struggle that demands our vigorous attention. As global events continue to unfold unpredictably, we are reminded that only sustained and deep attention will yield sustained and deep change. We hope to inspire both attention and change.
In this issue, we focus primarily on first steps—creating an invitation for music professors, whether performers, composers, educators, historians, theorists, or ethnographers, to take up this work. We challenge those readers who have not yet begun and who may ask, “Why decolonize?” to instead ask, “Why not?” Whatever your answer, we encourage you to treat this issue as a source of inspiration and guidance from colleagues who have taken those initial steps. We also hope that readers already engaged in decolonizing their teaching will find encouragement, support, and new insights and strategies. The articles, written by a range of contributors including several collaborations, consist of reflective essays, theoretical papers, and, of course, pedagogies worth sharing.
These articles and their pedagogies must be placed within the broader context of decolonization and its relationship with universities and colleges. In this introduction, we therefore offer starting places for three themes—terms and theories, the Canadian settler context, and post-secondary music programs. We then bring the articles into dialogue with these themes, inviting readers to engage more deeply with the authors' work as they present their own projects and practices.
Terms and Theories
The tangle of theoretical terms and concepts surrounding decolonization can deter even those of us with the best intentions. Definitions are often elusive and contentious, “consisting of a heterogeneity of viewpoints, approaches, political projects and normative concerns.” Position and privilege, past and present, shape understandings in complex ways. Given our focus on pedagogical application, we will keep our theorizing practical. Broadly, theorists and activists confront the impacts of European colonialism both globally and locally. Emerging from voyages of “discovery” in the late fifteenth century, colonial extraction, occupation, and eventual settlement followed the interests of expanding European international trading companies. While one can find rare examples of equitable alliances and treaties in European expansion history, the unfolding of the colonial project has left a far more devastating legacy of worldwide invasion, occupation, violence, and domination. Extracted wealth from colonies flowed back into Europe, and during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, financed the blossoming of artistic and intellectual production typically identified as the Baroque, the Age of Reason, and the Enlightenment. Democracy, rationalism, capitalism, and public education flourished largely through economic success in distant lands.
Though arguably simplistic, European colonial activities can be divided into exploitation colonies, with the primary goal of resource extraction and increased wealth for the metropole, and settlement colonies, where the main goal was land appropriation for eventual immigrant ownership. Of course, many exploitation colonies also attracted settlers, and settler colonies also focused on resource extraction and export. Colonialism of both types gave rise to theories of racial hierarchy and cultural evolution. Cultural historian Craig Steven Wilder puts it bluntly: “Racial ideas were born in the colonial world, in the brutal and deadly processes of empire building.” Validating the inequities of the colonial world—which existed in blatant conflict with Enlightenment ideals of rational humanism, freedom, and happiness—scientific racism arose and became embedded in the academy through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Only after the comparatively swift collapse of European imperial power in the twentieth century, through the gradual and often bloody emergence of independent nations from former colonies, did colonial theories of racial difference and social Darwinism face challenges through post-colonial frameworks.
Scholars often credit Frantz Fanon as the initial source for theoretical discussions of decolonization and post-colonial studies. Other important post-colonial theorists such as Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha troubled and disrupted many scholarly and artistic assumptions rooted in largely unseen colonial epistemologies. This key point—that colonialism is not a historical moment but rather the foundation of ongoing social and economic inequities insidiously woven through global and local relations—has resulted in the concept of “coloniality”: “long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism.” It is easy to view colonial violences as indignities of the past that have largely healed. This perception is inaccurate. The continued imbalance of wealth and resources between the “developed” and “developing” worlds is only one example of coloniality in a supposedly post-colonial world. More relevant to this issue is the coloniality embedded in access to education and the question of which knowledge systems and teaching contexts are privileged.
There is no post-colonial context, however, in locations like North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand, where colonizers remain. In Canada and the United States, modes of government, economics, and education remain firmly entrenched in the institutions of the settler populations. Scholars therefore discuss the complications of decolonization rather than post-colonialism. In particular, Tuck and Yang’s foundational article, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” powerfully establishes educational terms: decolonization is not a metaphorical or philosophical shift roughly equivalent to calls for diversity, inclusion, or justice. Rather, it demands action, personal and structural change, and fundamentally requires the return of land to Indigenous peoples. Other scholars resist or complicate this strict focus on Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships, reaching beyond the North American context. Nelson Maldonado-Torres, for instance, emphasizes the fight for decolonization among Black South Africans and within his native Puerto Rico. Aileen Moreton-Robinson addresses her Aboriginal identity in the Australian context in her work. These and other scholars focus on the global reach of colonial violences. The discussion changes depending on the people and histories involved.
We who have edited this issue, and perhaps most of you reading it, remain settlers on occupied Indigenous lands that have been “developed” through the labor of enslaved or colonized peoples. The term and concept of settler colonialism, like the use of “coloniality” and “decoloniality” instead of “colonialism” and “decolonization,” emphasizes the present-tense, institutional, and structural nature of this concern. Not only did early colleges and eventual universities offer “a norm of instruction and training … exported from Europe and … imposed on the rest of humanity,” they were also funded by wealth amassed through resource extraction, particularly the African slave trade. Higher education, founded and funded through the colonial project, repaid this support by the nineteenth century with “research” that seemingly absolved Europe of 200 years of domination and violence. Moreover, many current academic disciplines, including musical studies, took form in the colonial context and continue to privilege and disseminate epistemologies and pedagogies from the nineteenth century.
Not surprisingly, many education scholars have grappled with whether a colonial institution like the university can ever be decolonized. Mihesuah and Wilson, and Tuhiwai Smith, for instance, foreground the racism Indigenous peoples have faced in research projects and academic settings. In Reshaping the University: Responsibility, Indigenous Epistemes, and the Logic of the Gift, Rauna Kuokkanen describes how both academics and the university are complicit in the colonization of Indigenous peoples and places. Her extended quotation is valuable: “As an institution, the academy supports and reproduces certain systems of thought and knowledge, and certain structures and conventions, that rarely reflect or represent Indigenous worldviews. In this way, it silences and makes invisible the reality of many Indigenous students. To a large extent, the academy remains founded on epistemological practices and traditions that are selective and exclusionary and that are reflective of and reinscribed by the Enlightenment, colonialism, modernity, and, in particular, liberalism. These traditions, discourses, and practices have very little awareness of other epistemologies and ontologies, and offer them heavily restricted space at best. Even in the academic spaces that consider themselves most open to ‘changing the paradigm,’ individuals are often unwilling to examine their own blind spots. Nor are they willing to acknowledge either their privilege or their participation in academic structures and the various colonial processes of society in general.” Further work explores the option of walking away or refusing the entire academic project. Some scholars hypothesize that modernity itself, including the university, is beyond reform and can only be metaphorically hospiced, whereas others choose to reject entirely any compromise with the white settler majority. We value these perspectives, particularly from Indigenous scholars, but see our work as different, though complementary. As white settlers, we feel an obligation to educate our peers to reduce the burden of education on those who do not wish it. We encourage you as readers to explore the many theoretical strands of this conversation with these and other authors, and to question your own motivations for doing this work. Self-reflection, doubt, and honesty are important elements in the process. As Bhambra, Gebrial, and Nişancıoğlu argue, “There is, as ever, more work to be done.”
The Canadian Settler Context
Since we write from and reside in the land currently known as Canada, and this journal along with its sponsoring body, the Canadian University Music Society, is also based there, it seems appropriate to address this national context specifically. As in all settler colonies, the story of Indigenous-settler relations here is long and painful. It is sometimes tempting to see settler historical relationships with Indigenous peoples as comparatively benevolent, if not innocent. Yet national policies dating as far back as the 1869 Indian Act, though ostensibly focused on education and assimilation, have more often manifested as attempted cultural and literal genocide. In recent years, the conversation has shifted in large part through the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The TRC took place between 2008 and 2015 as one of five components of the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, which came into effect in 2007 and was the largest class action suit in Canadian history.
A simultaneous grassroots protest, #IdleNoMore, raised public awareness of Indigenous rights and sovereignty as well as environmental protection. The TRC’s final report included ninety-four “Calls to Action,” many addressing education. Initial responses to these calls have ranged in scope from general position
The scholarly discourse varies from brief statements (Barnard 2015) to multi-item potential actions (as in Pete 2016) and analyses of theoretical pedagogical frameworks (like Andreotti et al. 2015).
Terms such as “decolonization,” “Indigenization,” and “reconciliation” have grown more contentious than ever (Hill 2012; Garneau 2016). While the literature offers abundance of ideas, those new to the conversation can still ask where to begin, and more seasoned participants have felt stymied by the gap between talk and action. Much like anti-racist organizing in the United States, Canada has seen both encouraging and dispiriting moments; the winter 2020 protests supporting the Wet’suwet’en are a case in point. Scholars have pointed out both the multiple definitions of “decolonization,” “Indigenization,” and “reconciliation” inside the academy and the risk of deploying them as tokens (e.g., Bopp, Brown, and Robb 2017; Gaudry and Lorenz 2018; Giroux 2017). Nonetheless, Canadian universities persist in partnering with governments to build support for Indigenous students (Universities Canada n.d.). National and local media also appear to be making deliberate efforts to include more Indigenous-authored and Indigenous-themed material, and activism—both Indigenous and non-Indigenous—continues.
Yet most of these preliminary actions have addressed theory, politics, and social engagement rather than pedagogy. We recognize that systemic transformation demands deep comprehension and rigorous critique of the structures beneath the surface, but we believe it is equally essential to present concrete, practical approaches to implementing decolonization within the university classroom. Waiting for top-down change could mean a long wait. Grounded in our reading of the diverse sources cited above and in our lived experience, we make the case that decolonization must be not only theoretical but hands-on, not just expressed in words but carried out in actions. Dismantling systemic and institutional frameworks while transforming our personal hearts, minds, convictions, and values is grueling but indispensable work. Yet, like vines that creep over concrete buildings, gradually chipping away artificial stone until the structure collapses, we contend that small deeds can bring about revolutionary change.
Post-Secondary Music Programs and Decolonizing
Music studies in higher education afford expansive ground for this kind of action. Although many faculty teaching in music programs in Canada and the United States have recently initiated discussions and curricular revisions—and four calls in the TRCC Calls to Action (nos. 11, 16, 62, and 65) directly target post-secondary education, requesting more funding for Indigenous students, collaborative reconciliation research, and curricular changes that encompass teacher training for primary/secondary schools and the creation of Aboriginal language degree and diploma programs (TRCC 2015)—undergraduate music study largely continues to be one of the most conservative and resistant-to-change disciplines in post-secondary education.
The standard Bachelor of Music and BA Major in Music curriculum remains overwhelmingly centered on the elite concert traditions of Europe and its diaspora, what is usually termed Western classical or art music. Proudly Eurocentric, and devoted to performing, analyzing, and historicizing composed repertoire written largely by white men, North American music programs urgently need pedagogical reforms to address multiple equity and representation issues. Many of the events and initiatives we highlight below, therefore, often seem to blur decolonization together with diversity, inclusion, feminism, anti-racism, and various other social-justice projects. Tuck and Yang’s reprimand frequently feels more aspirational than practical when applied to music studies; simply acknowledging the inherent whiteness of typical post-secondary music programs can be an enormous first step for faculty, staff, and students.
Most branches of music studies have diversified their repertoire and research techniques. Yet these shifts still emerge predominantly from Eurocentric frameworks and often fail to reach foundational or core courses. This is precisely where Tuck and Yang’s critique carries weight: diversifying repertoire is not the same as decolonial theory or practice. Moreover, the idea of music as an art object that can be studied and analyzed apart from its emotional, spiritual, or bodily realities—which can even be seen as detrimental to scholarly work—is deeply ingrained in European colonial epistemologies and academic history. Music history, theory, and performance courses in North American universities elevate European art-music repertoire, notation, and a vision of music as a sound object composed of discrete parts that can be taken apart, even dissected, to be “understood.” Margaret’s recent work on decolonizing music history demonstrates that these foundational courses date back to late nineteenth-century European and North American conservatories and colleges (Walker 2020). This standardization not only coincides with the institutionalization of musicology as a legitimate academic field, but also with the era when European imperial occupation covered roughly 70 percent of the globe (see also Karnes 2008; Morrison 2019, 781–82). Robin’s work likewise emphasizes decolonizing core courses, but in the subfield of music theory (Attas 2019a; see also 2019b; Attas and Nickleson 2018). As her research highlights, elective courses can be easier starting points because their content and learning outcomes are less fixed, but tackling the core curriculum will impact student learning more deeply pervasively and, crucially, signals a genuine commitment to meaningful change.
Whether in required or elective components, initiatives that aim at curricular or disciplinary reform in music have multiplied within the academy in recent years. These initiatives have been driven by concerns about race and ethnicity (Ewell 2020; Guerrero et al. 2007; Hisama 2016, 2018a), diversity (Epstein et al. 2019; Ingraham et al. 2017; Madrid 2017), and broader modernization (Campbell et al. 2014; Moore 2017; Hisama 2018b), in addition to decolonization directly (Levitz 2017; Chávez and Skelchy 2019; Stimeling and Tokar 2020; Walker 2020).
Each semi-autonomous subdiscipline of music contains members who are treating curricular reform and increasingly weaving in themes of power, race, and colonialism. Music education, given its ties to communities and social issues coupled with its expertise in pedagogical research and reform, has perhaps been the most prolific (see, among numerous other examples, Bradley 2006, 2012, 2017; Hess 2015, 2017; Shifres and Rosabal-Coto 2017; Rosabal-Coto 2019). Musicology and music theory have lately begun to join the effort, with items such as “Music, Race and Ethnicity” (a special issue of the Journal of the American Musicological Society; Lewis and Calico 2019), keynote addresses at the Society for Music Theory (West Marvin et al. 2019) and the Canadian University Music Society (Robinson 2019), and two open letters from Project Spectrum (Reed et al. 2020a, 2020b). Despite this interest, such calls to action still appear disconnected from mainstreams of our fields and undergraduate classroom practice. Although we find cause for optimism in the groundswell of apparently sincere engagement, music studies in higher education remain fundamentally anchored in their white and colonial origins.
Filling in the gaps
“As much as the discourse of decolonization has been embraced by the social sciences over the last decade, the decolonial project rarely gets beyond the conceptual or metaphorical level” (Tuck and Ree 2013, 647).
In the discussions of decolonization that arise from music academic societies and mentioned above, we see two common but significant gaps. First, there is insufficient focus on music students—learners—not just as people implicated in decolonization work but as partners welcomed into the dialogue. Second, there is an overemphasis on theoretical positions rather than practical steps—that is, on critical theory instead of praxis. Attention to pedagogy, of course, differs across the music disciplines; the move from teacher-centred to learner-centred teaching (charted in higher educational research since the mid-1990s by Barr and Tagg 1995, among others) is still only slowly gaining ground across the academy. The priority given to theoretical over practical engagement in decolonial scholarship is also understandable: given the deep entrenchment of colonial histories, methods, and values in the academy, disciplinary critique performs an important role in decolonization. But new theories and sweeping calls for action appear ineffective, if not meaningless, if learners are not themselves swept up in the change.
This remains an incomplete list, and we are also encouraged by the growing number of new projects, presentations, and publications that tackle these and other pressing issues in the musical academy.
The work we do in classrooms and studios shapes future teachers, alongside musicians, composers, and researchers. As scholars from historian John Willinsky to feminist theorist and activist bell hooks have made plain, research and education are not only central vehicles of the colonial project (Willinsky 1998); they also hold enormous potential as crucial sites for enacting social change (hooks 1995, 2003). Drawing further on the work of Mi’qmaw education scholar Marie Battiste (2013), we view decolonizing music pedagogies as having two dimensions. Music instructors must recognize, name, and reveal the Eurocentric assumptions underpinning North American post-secondary music study. And instructors must acknowledge the value of multiple systems of knowledge, belief, aesthetic commitments, and practice in music—all of which are just as valid as Western ones. As our students—emergent teachers, professors, musicians, and scholars—pass through our classrooms and studios, these values will shape what they transmit to their own students, in the same way that Western European values have molded our teaching for centuries.
Pedagogies, Strategies, Reflections
Several pages above, we invited you, our readers, to ask not “why” but “why not” decolonize. Yet we recognize that the most pressing question is probably not “why” but “how.” We know this is a challenging topic requiring substantial rethinking, and we have wrestled with these questions ourselves. Decolonizing music study may be most uncomfortable in that it demands we reexamine something we love—music—and question how we were taught and what we absorbed along the way. But questioning is not equivalent to rejecting, and the twelve authors these seven articles and final open letter bring together offer a wide range of ideas that will prove both useful and confrontational.
Our issue begins with an article by D. Linda Pearse, “Expanding the University Music Ensemble: Lessons from an Intercultural Artistic Collaboration.” Pearse draws on lessons from the intercultural artistic project How Do We Listen? to advance six teaching strategies for ensemble courses in music programs, while illustrating how theoretical scholarship on the decolonization of education can be productively applied to the specific setting of university music programs. Making these links is easier than it appears; the insightfulness of Pearse’s self-observation and her commitment to ongoing learning, however, involves a substantial amount of (immensely necessary) work.
Alexa Woloshyn’s “Decolonizing Desires and Unsettling Musicology: A Settler’s Personal Story of Researching and Teaching Indigenous Music at an American University” moves the dialogue about music-education decolonization to the level of a single course, specifically a graduate musicology seminar. Like Pearse, Woloshyn turns to theoretical literature to spur introspection as she continues her efforts to unsettle her own settler identity. She candidly reflects—and is self-critical—about what successes and challenges emerged in her course design and implementation. By weaving her students’ commentary into her critique, Woloshyn highlights how profoundly teaching choices affect student learners.
Both Pearse and Woloshyn consider decolonization of music curricula in the context of Indigenous–settler relationships within the territories now called Canada and the United States. Travis D. Stimeling and Sophia M. Enriquez approach a different nexus of relations when they examine the place of Appalachian bluegrass music in a program dominated by Western art music in “Building Relationships, Sustaining Communities: Decolonial Directions in Higher Ed Bluegrass Pedagogy.” They focus on the bluegrass jam session as a music-ensemble pedagogy that is decolonial and inclusive in that it lifts up and fosters local practices and connections, even as it also perpetuates aspects of settler-colonialism in the West Virginia higher education environment they speak from.
Quintina Carter-Ényì, Aaron Carter-Ényì, and Kevin Nathaniel Hylton similarly tackle how marginalized cultures are treated in the white settler-dominant landscape of U.S. higher education in “How We Got into Drum Circles, and How to Get Out: De-essentializing African Music.” Starting with a perceptive account of the ubiquitous North American drum circle, they then offer an imaginative alternative. The article is direct in “calling out” the racist treatment that U.S. (and, presumably, Canadian) music schools often extend to African music—engaging it only superficially—and lays out the Africana Music Experiential Pedagogy (AMEP) program they have built to counter this, presenting a compelling different path.
Our next piece moves continents once more, exploring decolonial pedagogies from another colonized region while still anchoring its critique in a North American viewpoint. Gillian Irwin’s “Decolonization in ‘Wild Schools’: Local Music Pedagogies in Indonesia’s Taman Siswa School System” recounts the history of an anti-colonial school, the Taman Siswa, examining what drove its founders and teachers and its role in Indonesian history and culture. By chronicling this particular case in such detail, Irwin’s article raises questions about broader topics, including lessons in the nuances of decolonization within local settings and the pedagogical strategies music institutions might follow as they engage in this work.
Many essays in this collection propose decolonizing music pedagogy through introducing non-Western art-music repertoires. Gabriel Dharmoo’s reflection “Reflets de la colonialité dans la scène des musiques nouvelles” returns the focus to Western art music, but zeroes in on contemporary art music from the city of Montreal. Drawing on a wealth of personal experience, Dharmoo poses provocative questions grouped around a series of key topics, modeling (and thereby fostering) the kind of self-reflection that is a vital part of performing decolonizing actions.
We leave the final word among our peer-reviewed contributions for an article on an Indigenous student’s experience in a post-secondary music program. Highlighting student viewpoints in educational research is, unfortunately, still too infrequent; in a decolonizing context, it is even more crucial to include student voices from colonized communities. Kendra Jacque and Ellen
Waterman’s “The Long and Narrow Road: An Inuit Student’s Journey through Post-Secondary Music” uses Jacque’s personal narrative both as a single instance of one person’s experience and as a tool to reflect on and connect to the broader experiences of Indigenous students in Canadian post-secondary education. Moving from the particular to the general, from the micro to the macro, the authors build a convincing case for the wide-ranging changes they advocate. Moreover, the co-authorship model they employ sets an example of how non-Indigenous music academics may use their positions to respect and highlight music students whose voices have been sidelined in higher education music programs.
Our special issue ends with an open letter from Stó:lō scholar and Canada Research Chair Dylan Robinson, written directly to the deans, directors, department heads, and faculty members running university music programs. Robinson’s calls to action—and, critically, to accountability—are not only unambiguous and straightforward; they are delivered with growing urgency. As he “calls in” all of us who teach in and administer music programs, he touches on the issue’s core themes: the need to demolish colonial structures built into entrance audition and core-course requirements, and the necessity of teaching multiple epistemologies, analytical approaches, and ways of listening. Robinson’s language is tough but nonetheless gives practical advice that ties in fruitfully with the individual pedagogical interventions of the articles.
We have presented this special issue as a collection of starting points for decolonizing music pedagogies, and we anticipate that, in reading the articles that follow, you will encounter many suggestions for launching your own effort. Yet the range and specificity of the examples may seem overwhelming. So often, we meet faculty enthusiastic about trying to decolonize but unsure how to take the first step. We will close, then, with three broad suggestions emerging from these pieces.
Connect with the local. Many of our contributors describe music happening in nearby communities. What sorts of music are connected to the community around your institution, both now and in the past? Who creates that music? Are those people and those musics included in your institution? The image of academia as an ivory tower cut off from the surrounding world is an old trope, and the idea of breaking down that exclusionary structure has been advocated before. But specifically in music programs, turning to past and present local music scenes of any genre is a much-needed mode of transformation.
Take the time to discover the origins of what and how you teach. This entails exploring the provenance of the musical works, information, pedagogy, and curricula you use. What are the sources, and how have they been mediated? What messages about culture, values, race, or meaning are sedimented in how you pass on information or evaluate it? We encourage you to test received wisdom and standard practices—trace their journey and hold them up to critique.
Listen both closely and broadly. By this we first mean the careful musical listening so many of us do and use for both learning and assessing in many classes. We urge listening differently as a decolonial practice. We are cautious, reckoning with Dylan Robinson’s exacting critique of destructive colonial listening habits in Hungry Listening.
We also mean a broad practice of attentive listening to other people and to alternative voices, both human and otherwise. By hearing the perspectives of a young music student from Indonesia, a Wolastoqew musical collaborator, or the Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in our classrooms, we open not just our ears but our entire pedagogical approach.
Throughout this issue, and in our own work, we are reminded repeatedly that decolonization is an ongoing process, not a finished product. Our hope is that this special issue inspires you to begin or continue your own process and to commit not merely to a single step, but to a lifelong journey. A measure of this issue’s success would be that its articles become historical artifacts, their arguments eventually incomplete, irrelevant, and outdated, while their pedagogies remain vibrant. May the conversation continue.
Robinson, Dylan. 2020. Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies.
Robinson, Dylan. 2020. Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. [duplication to cover repositioned referenced work]
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