Musicking in the Borders toward Decolonizing Methodologies

Abstract

This essay engages a decolonial border methodology to unveil dichotomies of theory/practice, and scholarship/education as contested spaces of multiplicity, dominated by a coloniality of power. Musicking’s profound connections to embodied experience make it a locality ripe for decolonial activity. Furthermore, I argue that Christopher Small’s insights when critically reevaluated with decolonial thought, Deleuzian ontology, and border thinking with and from subaltern epistemologies, emerges as a productive site of struggle. This methodology hopes to create a malleable framework for other decolonizing methodologies to engage with rather than provide a blueprint for application. Decolonization as a musicking methodology can facilitate emergent ideas through equitable dialogue while simultaneously creating real spaces for more democratic and equitable musicking relationships. I argue here that decolonial music education, broadly conceived as occurring both inside and outside of academic institutions, carries profound implications not only for decolonizing music as such, but for larger decolonial struggles. It is in the borders of our musicking communities that the educators become the educated and the oppressed wage their own struggle for liberation with solidary musickers at their side.

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