Margaret Walker | Decolonizing music history
Margaret has shared the article “Towards a Decolonized Music History Curriculum” which was published recently in the Journal of Music History Pedagogy.
Towards a Decolonized Music History Curriculum
Margaret Walker is Professor of Ethnomusicology and Musicology at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. Her monograph, India’s Kathak Dance in Historical Perspective (2014) focused the critical historiography of kathak dance, and her work also includes gender, caste, diaspora and colonialism. Her recent research includes decolonization, global music histories, and teaching and learning in university music programs. https://queensu.academia.edu/MargaretWalker
It was really great to read this article, thank you for sharing it with the conference. I like the distinction that you make between decanonising and decolonising the curriculum. A question that I have relates to some differences in how US- and UK-based HE in music often seem to be characterised. University education in the UK can include (it seems) a larger number of modules focused on popular musics or popular music practices. I have sometimes come across the claim that the presence of these modules makes the curriculum automatically more diverse. However, I think that your broader point that teaching any sort of music history without confronting the history of colonialism will be lacking is a good one. I wonder if you have any thoughts about teaching popular or other music histories (for example experimental musics) that often in their pedagogy may exhibit some of the same problems as you have identified here: the creation of an institutionalised canon of primarily white artists in that field? I ask this because I believe those of us who teach the history of the later 20th Century need to think about these problems as much as people who are teaching earlier musics.
I just wrote a reply and it disappeared when I click “post comment.” 🙁
Thanks for reading and writing such a nice reply. I agree that we all need to situate our courses culturally, geographically, as well as temporally. Courses in popular music (whether history or practice) in North America certainly include Black artists and racial issues, but they still have titles like “The Social History of Popular Music” when they are in actual fact only about North American and to some extent U.K. popular music. No one would omit The Beatles, but surely the history of popular music should also include K-Pop, Bollywood, Indi-Pop, Krongcong and more!
I think that embracing an understanding of “Music” as a human process with globally entangled histories, and then being specific about what particular music one is teaching or learning is part of the answer. Bachelor of [Elite White Concert] Music?
Hi Lauren,
Thanks so much both for reading it and saying nice things! Your questions are great. There are a few Bachelor of Popular Music programs in North America (I can think of one in Canada and one in the U.S.) and certainly many or most canonical programs have courses in popular music available. The good thing about courses or modules in popular music history or practice is that they definitely include Black artists and racial issues. But they are still “tacked on” to “real” music history. Also, just as our courses in “music history” are in fact about the history of the elite concert music of Europe and its Diasporas, course in “popular music” are North American and some European popular musics. No one would leave out the Beatles, but what about K-Pop, Bollywood, Indi-pop, kroncong and more?
What I would love to see is “music” always being broadly conceived (entangled histories, transnational practices) or clearly defined (Bachelor of White Elite Music – okay, not really).
Many thanks for your reply, Margaret. I absolutely agree with you – well, yes, not about having very restrictive programmes, but definitely about treating western art music as a ‘genre’ rather than a neutral category for a module. It should be possible to change things in the UK since our qualifications framework is based on skills rather than genres/types of music, but of course the ways those skills are evidenced has often been with recourse to western art musics first or only. This is where we need to rethink (e.g. what a ‘theoretical understanding’ really is).