Global Musical Modernisms as Decolonial Method (original) (raw)
Related papers
"Introduction to the Special Issue on Global Musical Modernisms," with Christopher Miller
Twentieth-Century Music 20.3, 2023
Drawing on “global modernisms” from literary studies, this special issue is the first publication to articulate and theorize “global musical modernisms” as a critical and ethically complex framework that is anchored in the relation between modernities and modernisms, as well as the colonial context underlying both terms. Fundamentally, global musical modernisms expand the temporal, spatial, and genre boundaries of “musical modernism” as it is conventionally understood. Navigating the disciplinary divide between musicology and ethnomusicology that has contributed to the late emergence of “global musical modernisms,” the introduction theorizes the term through the lenses of aesthetics, sociohistorical context, and the resistive self-consciouness that is related to multiple schools of European and global modernity/modernism studies, and central to the rethinking of musical modernism in global terms. But does global musical modernisms navigate coloniality in a way that replicates or ameliorates oppression, or both? This special issue provides readers with a range of perspectives on that question.
Special issue: Decolonising music and music studies
Ethnomusicology Forum, 2021
Decolonisation is a cause célèbre that has been making the rounds on the agenda of an increasing number of universities in recent years, with rising staff consciousness and changing student demographics/ demands encouraging institutions to address overlooked narratives and silenced perspectives within still-operating systems of structural oppression. While many decolonial efforts have been undertaken actively in North America and Australia, and in departments of history, political science and sociology, increasingly in the United Kingdom, music departments are slowly, if sometimes reluctantly, seeking to address epistemological shifts in their very structures of existence. These exertions have ranged from questioning the raison d'être behind knowledge-building itself in an idealised (and unattainably) equal world, to curriculum reviews both superficial and extensive. Polite panel discussions have been organised alongside the rearing up of fiery messages channelling #RhodesMustFall campaigns on mailing lists, blogs, podcasts and vociferous social media platforms led by younger student voiceswith social media becoming platforms crucial for the decolonisation of narratives and methodologies themselves, particularly in the affordance of spaces to both marginalised voices and thinkers who choose not to speak in, for want of a better word, potentially elite language styles of 'academese'. 1 Tackling day-today anxieties of 'politically correct' versus 'triggering' discussions in classrooms of morphing and differently-privileged participants as well as teachers, has stepped up from the generic to the targeted. More specifically in the COVID-hit month of June 2020, the global fallout of the not-unrelated #BlackLivesMatter movement (henceforth #BLM), returned with renewed energy following protests against the murder of George Floyd, led to an increased call for actions on all academic and societal fronts. 2 An intervention was made by scholar-musician-activist Danielle Brown, whose open letter to ethno/musicologists on her blog 'My People Tell Stories' and to the mailing list of the Society for Ethnomusicology 3 exposed the longunsaid but widely-known reality: that systemic racism is embedded within the field in small and large degrees; that academia itself (including ethnomusicology) remains a neocolonial enterpriseby dint of its default setup of (often, BIPOC/ Black & Global Majority [henceforth BGM]) research informants as secondary inputs to the careers of (often, tenured, elite and white) scholars in established institutions. 4 That decolonisation is caught up in uproar, debate, activism and necessary institutional change is clear enough. But can (or will) it be incorporated into the periodisation of musical epistemologies à la modernism, postmodernism or the still-trendy
Reflections of coloniality in the new music scene (English translation)
Intersections, 2019
Some members of the new music scene wish to decentralize its Eurocentric roots and criticize its colonialist tendencies. Prior to the discussion of strategies that could constitute a decolonizing framework, it is useful to identify how coloniality is reflected in this scene. The author, himself an active member of this scene, shares avenues of reflection on the cultural homogeneity of the milieu, questions of access, the legacy of classical music, the concept of European excellence, the presumption of universality, the coexistence of legitimacy and marginality, the ambiguous relationship with cultural appropriation and the foundations of the attribution of merit. Translated by Elise Pineda with support from the National Arts Centre (2021). Original article: Dharmoo, Gabriel. 2019. “Reflets de la colonialité dans la scène des musiques nouvelles.” Intersections 39, no. 1 : 105-121
norient, 2019
Colonialism is not over, it's just less visible, especially in culture. As a curator of the Berlin based label Global Pop First Wave focussing on non-western pop music, scholar Holger Lund sees himself entangled in neo- or post-colonial paradoxes. An essay about the dialectics of westernized local and global pop music and why its decolonization is inevitable. Source (July 2019): https://norient.com/stories/decolonizing-pop-music/ Renewed (March 2020): https://norient.com/stories/decolonizing-pop-music
2011
Edward Said's two recent books Culture and Imperialism (1993) and Musical Elaborations (1991) are variations on common themes, and both are made more resonant by being read in relation to each other. The reasons for this are not simply circumstantial, but emanate from the internal logic of the texts and from the ways each can be seen to comment upon the ideas and methods of the other. Each operates within an explicitly musical mode of discourse, and each contributes to a cultural critique which is premised upon specifically overlapping aesthetic and hermeneutic understandings. This essay reads each text separately for its particular illuminations and then reads both together as integral parts of a comprehensive whole. It seeks to trace some of the deeper correspondences between the two texts and, in extrapolating from this polyvocal reading, to argue for a similarly polyvocal aesthetic and methodology in music and in musicology, as well as in expressions and interpretations of i...
Critical Sonic Practice: Decolonizing Boundaries in Music Research
2021
Introduction African-American music is one of the greatest art forms of the past century but research on this music's composition is underrepresented in scholarship and education. In the Americas, during the era of slavery, African language and culture groups were separated to avoid Africans retaliating; music, however, was more easily subverted and at times, religiously converted, away from the ears of the oppressor. African music, with its complex polyrhythms, improvisation, vocal harmonies and unique timbres was parsed as noise to European invaders and this lack of understanding persists. This lack of representation and self-representation is reflected in indigenous and local music research across the colonial and neocolonial world. For example, in the United States of America, the education system often omits indigenous musicians, such as Native American and First Nations musicians, as well as influential global styles such as African-American trap and drill, or Latinx musics, such as reggaeton. As composer-theorist, my auto-ethnographic research centers on music producers in Accra, their process, influences, mentorship and sites of listening that have repercussions on the study of similar black electronic musics. Hence, the musical split in academic disciplines between white, black and
Pop–Power–Positions: Engaging with the (Post)Colonial in Popular Music Studies. An Introduction
~Vibes – The IASPM D-A-CH Series, 2021
Popular music is embedded in and connected to our globalized world. A world that is, however, not an equal and fair one. Issues of power, place, and positions play a fundamental role in all aspects of life: It matters in which context, world region, class, or ethnic belonging a person, an institution, a music is situated. The first volume of the IASPM D-A-CH series ~Vibes looks at (global) power relations and representations of differences in popular music (studies). In the introduction the editors argue for the inclusion of postcolonial thought and questions of decolonizing academia into popular music studies. Based on papers held at the IASPM D-A-CH conference in Bern 2018, this volume presents seven articles from various disciplines, discussing education, economics, globalization, and politics.
Music and Globalization: Critical Encounters
2012
In many ways the relatively recent phenomenon of “world music” has become the soundtrack for globalization, not only because it gives western consumers worry-free access to faraway places and sounds, but also because of the way that it mirrors the various sorts of extraction and appropriation that have come to be associated with late-industrial capitalism. The idea of music as a soundtrack, however, does not go far enough in terms of explaining how cultural products actually function in a global era. Like other forms of cultural production in the context of globalization, music is not merely a manifestation of global processes and dynamics, but one of the terrains on which globalization is produced.