JMHP Teaching Global Music History

Introduction by the Guest Editors: Global Music
History in the Classroom: Reflections on Concepts and

Practice
Hyun Kyong Hannah Chang, Daniel F. Castro Pantoja, and Hedy

Law
I
n the last decade, more scholars across music studies have drawn attention
to the separation of the disciplinary terrain into musicology and ethnomu-
sicology and its implications. They have pointed out that neither the insular
framework of Western-centered musicology nor the framework of world music
or area-based studies associated with ethnomusicology is a suitable basis for
generating meaningful or democratic narratives about music in the past and
the present.1 Scholarly networks coalescing under the banner of global music
history have constituted one (inter)disciplinary space actively nurturing and
addressing this criticism. While global music history cannot be reduced to a
single genealogy, objective, or motivation, it seems fair to note some shared
visions among scholars identifying with the new field. These visions include:
examining musical connections of the distant and recent past at different
geographic scales that have been obscured or made invisible; developing
new comparative approaches; and conducting historical analyses of musics
that were traditionally not treated as objects of historical inquiry. This is not
to say that scholarship committed to such objectives did not exist before the
emergence of global music history as a field. Global music history certainly
intersects and resonates with prior scholarships (and by extension, pedagogies)
across musicology and ethnomusicology that have adopted or experimented
with approaches that chafe at inherited disciplinary frameworks, including
1. See, for example, Olivia A. Bloechl, Native American Song at the Frontiers of Early
Modern Music (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1–32; Timothy D. Taylor,
Beyond Exoticism: Western Music and the World (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007),
1–14; Jesús A. Ramos-Kittrell, “Teaching Music and Difference: Music, Culture, and
Difference in Globalization,” AMS Musicology Now, July 10, 2018; Gavin S. K. Lee, “At Home at
Disciplinary Margins: Reflections of an Ethno/Musicologist from Elsewhere,” Sounding Board,
Ethnomusicology Review, March 4, 2018.
45
Journal of Music History Pedagogy, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 45–51. ISSN 2155-1099X (online)
© 2023, Journal of Music History Pedagogy, licensed under CC BY 3.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
46 Journal of Music History Pedagogy Introduction by the Guest Editors 47
nationalist historiography, ethnography-centered presentism, or ideas about integrates elements related to the global. They discuss not only design, meth-
cross-cultural comparativism. ods, and contents, but also—and crucially—candid reflections upon challenges
Even if there is no broad consensus on what global music history com- and failures and, in several cases, reservations about using the framework of
prises, what it should be, and where its boundaries lie, the recognition of global “global music history” or the word “global.”
music history as an emerging field (or subfield) within Anglophone music We recognize that our understanding of what is global is contingent on
studies (and beyond) is attested by recent conferences, society study groups, one’s lived experiences as a person and scholar: it is conditioned by where we
and research projects.2 The American Musicological Society (AMS) Global come from, the social experiences and encounters resulting from our back-
Music History Study Group was founded in 2019. In the same year, the Global grounds, the kinds of training we have received, and where we teach. Critical
History of Music Study Group of the International Musicological Society (IMS) contextual factors that shape the teaching of global music history include forms
met for the first time in Paris. Global music history has also garnered attention of globality that characterize our universities, especially student demographics;
in some quarters of ethnomusicology. Some of the most active participants the limitations and opportunities of the degree programs in which we teach
and interlocutors in global music history have indeed been ethnomusicolo- and sometimes have a hand in shaping; mandates from the federal government
gists. Although not known primarily as a field for historical inquiry, ethno- or official accreditation agencies; and the specific nature of the institutional
musicology has had a longstanding commitment to a global scope in its out- commitment to globalization. Since context-driven factors inform teaching, we
look and organization, and historical studies have been an enduring subfield have asked all the contributors to address their positionality and institutional
within it, as demonstrated by, for example, the Society for Ethnomusicology’s context explicitly, rather than assuming unrealistically that these have little
(SEM) Historical Ethnomusicology Section.3 Music theorists have also orga- bearing on their teaching.
nized workshops, conference panels, and roundtables exploring comparative We also asked each contributor to share a pedagogical tool—a course syl-
approaches in recent years, often under the rubric of the global. labus, a primary source, a reading, an assignment, a field trip activity, a link to
The increasing interest in “global” research—in terms of object or perspec- a performance or a recording, or an image of an object, if available—with the
tive, or both—raises new questions about what we teach in different music and hope that this issue would serve as a pragmatic guide or offer valuable examples
music studies courses. It is unlikely that we will create a more-or-less uniform for those trying to design a teaching module or an activity on global music
pedagogical canon for global music history, and it is a wrongheaded idea to history. We anticipate that this practical approach might be of use to advanced
attempt such a thing. Yet, considering the growing recognition of global music graduate students, those on the job market who may need to design a new
history as a field, we, as co-chairs of the AMS Global Music History Study course on global music history for job applications, faculty members curious
Group, felt that the time was ripe to take stock of how global perspectives are about creating a new class in this area, or members of curriculum committees
influencing teaching and were inspired to solicit pedagogues at the forefront of at the departmental or university level wishing to have documented models or
this emerging field to contribute to this special issue, “Teaching Global Music references on global music history for various curriculum renewal initiatives.
History: Practices and Challenges.” We hoped to trace what scholars thinking Yet, this special issue offers much more than a collection of teaching
about this emergent field do in their classrooms, how they operate as teachers tools, vital as they are for instructors or administrators who may have limited
by applying specific themes to their teaching practices, what challenges they open-access teaching resources in a fledgling subfield in one location. Readers
have encountered, and what provisional solutions they have provided. The will also find the contributors grappling with critical theoretical and conceptual
articles collected in this special issue shed light on their experiences and per- issues surrounding the field of global music history. The contributors ask ques-
spectives on teaching in this developing area, whether they teach a course that tions such as: What does it mean to teach global music history in the 2020s?
is explicitly called “global music history” or is a close variation of it, or one that What conceptual and practical factors should we consider if we want to bring
global music history into the classroom? How do we teach a topic in this rapidly
2. See Makoto Takao, “Global Music History,” Oxford Bibliographies in Music, accessed
March 19, 2023, https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199757824/ expanding area so that our students can see its relevance to their lives? How
obo-9780199757824-0317.xml. do we understand the “global” relative to the existing music curriculum in our
3. Consider, for example, the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM)’s mission statement: respective departments and our institutions’ strategic plans? How do the com-
“Founded in 1955, the Society for Ethnomusicology is a global, interdisciplinary network of
plicated disciplinary histories of music studies fields (including musicology,
individuals and institutions engaged in the study of music across all cultural contexts and his-
torical periods,” https://www.ethnomusicology.org/, accessed July 16, 2022. ethnomusicology, and music theory) shape our understandings of the “global?”
The essays in this special issue contemplate these questions and, in the process, The second part, “Experimenting with Global Music History in Pedagogy,”
clarify concepts and issues related to this emerging field. consists of three articles that are focused on concrete pedagogical approaches
Inspired by Chantal Mouffe’s critique of cosmopolitanism, we hope that or methods. They allow the readers to imagine what a global music history
this special issue works toward establishing a multipolar global music history pedagogy might look like in the classroom. Reflecting on her “Cantonese
pedagogy in which no single perspective can instantiate the meaning of “the Music” course at the University of British Columbia in Canada, Hedy Law
global” or “the world.”4 This is a task done by embracing an agonistic model describes how teaching Cantonese music to an Asian-dominated student body
that welcomes pedagogical practices that do not shy away from conflict and in Vancouver decenters Eurocentric epistemologies entrenched in Western art
contestation when it comes to thinking democratically about global spaces, and music. Her experience invites us to consider the wider global Sinophone sphere
which considers multiple agonistic regional poles (as opposed to one center) and the distinct geopolitics that have traversed different periods, including
and the agency of a plurality of actors, institutions, and events in the making those that pertain to the Hong Kong diaspora in recent years. In her article
of a global consciousness.5 Therefore, those interested in teaching global music Alecia Barbour discusses how she incorporates concepts from the developing
history should expect to engage with a plurality of meanings that scholars and scholarship of global music history into the general education music course
historical actors have attached to the term “global,” and which might be at odds that she teaches as the only full-time music faculty at an institute of technology,
with each other. The contributors indeed model the plurality that is necessarily and as a scholar identifying with historical ethnomusicology. She describes
a component of global music history. They make explicit how they conceptual- how embracing Michael Dylan Foster’s concept of defamiliarization has helped
ize and mold global music history for the classroom, and how their teaching is to broaden the non-major students’ perspectives on seemingly local music
shaped by the institutional and political contexts they inhabit, as well as their cultures and the notion of music itself. This part of the issue concludes with
personal and professional experiences. Nancy Rao’s article on the importance of developing archival approaches and
There are, nonetheless, connecting threads found across articles, which is perspectives that could have democratizing implications for the research and
why we have organized these articles into four parts, even if the arguments teaching of global music history. Rao’s work suggests that the politics of the tra-
presented within each part sometimes clash. The first part, “Putting Together ditional music archive necessitate broader considerations of what might serve
Global Music History Courses,” consists of two articles that reflect on music as evidence when conducting global music research. Rao’s reflections are based
history courses that explicitly address globality as their main subject. In her on a workshop on archival objects related to Chinese theaters and the life of
article Danielle Fosler-Lussier discusses how she has used threshold concepts Chinese Americans in early twentieth-century America that she conducted at
(or, in her words, “interpretive approaches that define a discipline”) to struc- the University of British Columbia and her research for the book Chinatown
ture her course “Music on the Move in a Globalized World” around key con- Opera Theater in North America. Her article suggests how bringing students
cerns associated with global music history. She shows how her open-access, to the archives, showing them objects directly related to narratives that shape
classroom-friendly book Music on the Move deploys these concepts to teach a our understanding of the globality of the past, and asking them to examine the
systematic and empathetic perspective on music, which ultimately encourages materiality of these objects can help them understand historically peripheral-
students to understand diverse people and processes they encounter in their ized communities that should nevertheless be included in the scope of global
lives. Roe-Min Kok’s article focuses on her interdisciplinary course “Music and music history today.
Colonialism in Global History,” offered at the undergraduate and graduate lev- The third part, “Words of Caution,” warns against facile or celebratory
els, and directed at both music and arts students. In addition to describing how applications of global music history in teaching. In her article Tamara Levitz
this course uses a global framework to explore the impact of Western art music critiques the treatment of global music history as a “heuristic, concept, method,
on former colonies, Kok’s article revolves around her students’ experiences and or pedagogical approach,” positioning it instead as “a decentering perspective.”
observations of the course, its effectiveness, and areas for improvement. Her argument cites the difficulty of having a shared concept of the world within
4. Chantal Mouffe, “Which World Order: Cosmopolitan or Multipolar?” Ethical musicology and unpacks this limitation through a genealogical comparison
Perspectives 15, no. 4 (December 2008): 453–67. See also Tamara Caraus, “Towards an Agonistic of comparative literature and musicology. She then uses Shu-mei Shih’s idea
Cosmopolitanism: Exploring the Cosmopolitan Potential of Chantal Mouffe’s Agonism,” of relational comparison to outline pedagogical ideas that could be applied to
Critical Horizons 17, no. 1 (January 2, 2016): 94–109.
music or music history courses, in place of using “global music history” as a
5. See Roland Robertson, “Global Connectivity and Global Consciousness,” American
Behavioral Scientist 55, no. 10 (2011): 1336–45. framework.
The final part of this special issue includes two conversations on the prac- the music history classroom, including the pointed critiques of what constitutes
tices, challenges, failures, and potential perils of teaching from the perspec- the “global” in global music history, for whom, and to what ends. Critiques are,
tives of global music history, bringing together themes that have appeared in of course, predictable in scholarly discourse. Less predictable from our view
all of the articles above. The first conversation is between Samuel Ajose, who as editors is the contributors’ repeated emphasis on the student demographics
teaches at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and Michael Birenbaum Quintero, that shape the global music history classroom, existing institutional or curric-
who teaches at Boston University, United States. Readers will appreciate how ular structures, and the history of the place where the university is embedded.
“global” and “global music history” are parsed by the interlocutors, who inhabit In other words, the effectiveness of global music history pedagogy is more con-
different institutional and regional contexts as ethnomusicologists and teach- text-driven than we thought. The external, environmental factors—as opposed
ers. Ajose and Birenbaum Quintero discuss how they apply global and histor- to internal ones such as readings, assignments, or course materials—often
ical dimensions to teaching in their respective positions and how they have emerge as conclusive criteria for successful global music history pedagogy. The
come to include community music-making outside the university to fulfil their practices and challenges discussed in these essays thus illuminate one point:
pedagogical commitment. The issue concludes with a conversation between contrary to most Western art music courses that might work across various
Olivia Bloechl and Bonnie Gordon. Bloechl addresses her “Introduction to teaching settings, global music history courses paradoxically demand instruc-
Global Music History” undergraduate course, while Gordon speaks of global tors to localize them. These courses tend to work better when instructors are
moments and frameworks that inform how she teaches the early music courses attuned to the opportunities and gaps that arise from the various student com-
that she offers at her institution. They discuss the usefulness of a global frame in munities and institutional initiatives that shape a university.
challenging assumptions of local or national history and the Eurocentric nar- The essays in this special issue demonstrate a diversity of current peda-
ratives that have long shaped music history survey courses while noting that gogical perspectives on and around the emerging field of global music history.
the term “global” itself might be intimidating for some students. They also offer We hope that the various experiences and tools presented here will serve as
pragmatic advice on selecting the teaching documents and delimiting the scope resources for readers who wish to construct new courses or revise existing ones
of the course based on their experience of what has and what has not worked specific to their teaching context. We hope that this collection of articles stim-
in the past. ulates constructive conversations on what the pedagogy of global music history
In conclusion, we as editors notice a pattern across this special issue: the might entail and why some of us want to teach it, especially when we want to
instructors’ embrace of (and reservations about) global music history as a explore alongside our students and colleagues what it means to study music in
method, orientation, or idea often stems from an ethical intention. The authors’ a global world, then and now, here or elsewhere.
goal is to make their classes and course materials more inclusive and to increase
their students’ critical awareness of their place in an interconnected world. This
goal is usually aligned with some stated institutionalized commitments typical
of many universities in the Global North. (We note, however, that the instruc-
tors’ ethically informed course objectives may clash with institutional strategies
around student recruitment—a point raised by Levitz, Birenbaum Quintero,
and Gordon). Courses committed to the ethical inclusivity of diverse musical
practices and histories may call attention to previously invisibilized musical
interconnections and exchanges across national and cultural divides. They may
also examine music in the context of regional or interregional conflicts and
conquests, which may help students understand how musical and sonic cul-
tures were influenced by colonialism and its legacy in different locations.
However, as much as we recognize or celebrate the ethical objective that
grounds these courses, we also caution that the conception of “globality” is always
contingent, contextual, plural, and contested. This provisional understanding
of the “global” is attested by a broad spectrum of pedagogical approaches for
Threshold Concepts for Music Studies from Global Music Histories 53
as a marker of “civility and polish.”1 The adoption of this music was part of
a global ambition: early in the twentieth century, the National Federation
Threshold Concepts for Music Studies from Gobal of Music Clubs, numbering more than 100,000 members, aimed “To make
America the Music Center of the World.”2 In a 1923 report on the activities of
Music Histories the Federation’s Public School Music Department, Ruth Haller Ottaway out-
lined a systematic program by which club members could press their commu-
Danielle Fosler-Lussier nities to start orchestras in the schools for the propagation of “good music and
high culture.”3 They would circulate petitions to institute Supervisors of Music
at the state and regional levels of the educational system; demand that local
school boards hire music teachers; equip schools with phonographs; and hold
I
music memory contests to reward familiarity with great works. Ottaway asked
n a time of urgent racial reckonings, it is apparent to many that we must
each participating music club to adopt the goal of “One Hundred Towns in our
innovate to build a more equitable and inclusive field of music studies.
State with Class Instructors in Violin in the Schools.”4 When I arrived at public
Faculty members have wondered how to revise the content we offer our
school 50-odd years later, school districts routinely employed music teachers,
students in collegiate instruction—and as we are not starting from a blank slate,
and my education reflected the priorities that the Federation had pushed to
change often means cutting content we or others consider important. Questions
institute.
about the metacognitive skills we teach have also come to the fore: in an era of
Not much has changed. Most of the music majors I teach in a NASM-
disinformation, it seems important to develop students’ critical thinking and
accredited School of Music at a Big Ten university in the US Midwest arrive
intellectual independence. The growing scholarship on global music histories
with a musical background similar to my early training. Some cultivate a
offers knowledge, attitudes, and skills that differ substantially from the surveys
double life and perform popular music “on the side,” which they have learned
many institutions offer to undergraduate music majors, and this literature has
independently of their music instructors or through student organizations.
helped my colleagues and me develop courses that encourage students to grow
Many have learned a commitment to a European classical canon.5 Most of
as flexible musicians and as engaged citizens. In this essay, I will identify some
these music majors will go on to be employed as teachers in K–12 schools like
of the ways in which approaches from global music histories have changed my
the ones they and I studied in: the program is oriented toward reproducing a
teaching and describe how my recent book, Music on the Move, translates them
European-derived repertoire and a set of performance practices suited to it.
into an accessible resource.
Sometimes the program now includes works in the Euro-American tradition
I have developed these strategies as a way of amending my own educa-
that were composed by people of color; but it is still rare that school music
tion. As a white child in suburban Maryland, I learned the music taught to me
programs abandon the band/orchestra/choir model to train students to play
in school orchestra and band programs—principally European-style classical
in Afro-diasporic or other popular musical styles. This stasis seems ever more
music and British and US symphonic and marching band music, with the extra-
out-of-step with the aims of racial justice that circulate in our public sphere,
curricular addition of big band jazz and American musical theater. Teachers
dismissed popular music as unworthy of attention, and the repertoire of school 1. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, This Violent Empire: The Birth of an American National
ensembles was circumscribed by canonic knowledge and a seemingly limited Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 17. In 1957, Charles Seeger
interest in alternatives. (I will not forget the time I asked about jazz played on described the “traumatic character” of US cultural life: see “Music and Class Structure in the
United States,” American Quarterly 9, no. 3 (Autumn, 1957): 282.
the violin and was scoffed at by a summer jazz band director; I eventually found
2. “Federation Aims,” Official Bulletin of the National Federation of Music Clubs, Special
Stuff Smith and Stéphane Grappelli on my own at the public library.) Festival Issue, Thirteenth Biennial Convention, Asheville, N.C. (June 1923): 4.
These limitations were foremost a matter of social priorities. In the postco- 3. Ruth Haller Ottaway, “Public School Music,” Official Bulletin of the National Federation
lonial United States, school music was institutionalized largely by white women of Music Clubs 3, no. 3 (November 1923): 6.
4. Ottaway, “Public School Music,” 6. Emphasis original.
who worked to secure a place for European-style music in their communities
5. See Loren Kajikawa, “The Possessive Investment in Classial Music,” in Seeing Race
Again: Countering Colorblindness Across the Disciplines, ed. Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw,
Luke Charles Harris, Daniel Martinez HoSang, and George Lipsitz (Oakland: University of
52 California Press, 2019), especially 155–59, 162–65, 169–171.
54 Journal of Music History Pedagogy Threshold Concepts for Music Studies from Global Music Histories 55
aims that are also increasingly enshrined in our universities’ strategic plans and racial content with contextual information, or refrain from performing it. I
diversity action plans. By maintaining a program of study in Schools of Music want our graduates to assess how institutional power and political pressures are
that resolutely look to Europe first, we educate our students in a manner more working and decide how to act in a principled way amid those systems. I want
reflective of 1923 than of 2023, one that mirrors colonial values, and one that the schoolteacher or the administrator at a nonprofit arts organization to think
excludes most of the music people love from the system of value they are taught. creatively about repertoire for concert programming and consider its appeal to
Our musicology course sequence for music majors at Ohio State includes various audiences—both the audiences who are historically loyal to the orga-
expected learning outcomes about musical repertories and skills. But in recent nization, and the audiences who have not really been invited in. And I want
years my primary goal for these students has been that they be able to function them to explain the value of more inclusive choices to the school board or to the
as musical citizens wherever they find themselves, now and in the future.6 At board of directors who are worried about fundraising. I want our graduates to
this moment, this learning outcome seems most important: call to mind historical precedents that shaped the present situation, or are ana-
logues to it, and use those precedents and analogues to evaluate new circum-
Students will “read the room,” correctly interpreting musical stances they encounter. I want them to notice aspects of a present-day situation
and social situations they encounter in the present day and that are rooted in colonial practice or racist exclusion and use what they know
responding thoughtfully and appropriately. to formulate strategies for making music and relating to people that do the
least harm and build the most good. The world we are living in demands that
This outcome implies several constituent objectives, these two among them: we cultivate knowledge and skills of this kind. The musical training I received
did not do that job, and neither did the musical training I was taught to deliver.
a) Students can explain multiple musical value systems and priorities,
including those that differ from their own. (This objective is about perspec- Threshold concepts for global music histories
tive-taking and empathy as well as content knowledge.)
To be able to do these things, our students need experience with a variety of
b) Students should understand that a theory can be applied to different cases musical repertories and practices from the past and present; and they also need
as a thinking tool and be able to apply a theory to a new case. (This objective an array of disciplinary thinking skills, some of them quite abstract. In deciding
is about analytical or “system” thinking, and it is a skill that many of our what and how to teach, I have used threshold concepts—because this approach
entering graduate students across the music disciplines don’t yet have).7 is closely allied to my learning objectives. Threshold concepts are a set of inter-
pretive approaches that define a discipline: according to Linda Adler-Kassner
I want our graduates to be able to size up a situation where racism, colonialism, and Elizabeth Wardle, they are concepts for “thinking through and with.”9 Often
or other forms of inequity are at work, ask smart questions, gather and assess threshold concepts present a specific disciplinary understanding of a phenome-
new information, and make ethical choices.8 non that contradicts learners’ common-sense understandings. One example is
For example, I want the performer to have enough knowledge and empathy that in Economics, the idea of “opportunity cost” does not correspond to our
to decide whether to frame the performance of a piece that includes troubling everyday usage of the word “cost”—it’s a more technical understanding that
points to a whole social situation and relationships between competing prior-
6. I owe this formulation to my colleague Ryan Skinner, whose Musical Citizenship course ities, and the concept of “opportunity cost” has implications for how problems
is the centerpiece of our newly adopted musicology curriculum for music majors at Ohio State are approached and solved in that field.10 Likewise, in Women’s Studies, “patri-
University.
archy” is a theoretical tool that helps us identify the working and outcomes of
7. My thinking about what our students need to learn owes a great deal to Samuel Dorf,
Louis K. Epstein, and our interlocutors at the event “‘But will they pass the exam?’—A 9. Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, eds., Preface to Naming What We Know:
Conversation about Graduate Entrance and Placement Exams in Musicology” (held via Zoom, Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies (Boulder: Utah State University Press, 2016), x.
December 2020). 10. Ray Land, Glynis Cousin, Jan H. F. Meyer, and Peter Davies, “Threshold Concepts
8. A useful set of concepts for assessing the quality of information can be found in the and Troublesome Knowledge: Implications for Course Design and Evaluation,” in Chris Rust,
Association of College & Research Libraries Framework for Information Literacy for Higher ed., Improving Student Learning: Diversity and Inclusivity (Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff
Education (Chicago: The Association of College & Research Libraries, 2016), https://www.ala. and Learning Development, 2005), 55; see also Martin Shanahan, “Threshold Concepts in
org/acrl/standards/ilframework. Economics,” Education and Training 58, no. 5 (2006): 510–520.
a social system.11 These are “threshold” concepts because each is a gateway to a Histories of colonialism, empire, and tourism allow us to witness processes of
discipline: once a person grasps the concept and knows how to apply it, the per- appropriation, imposition, assimilation, and mixing: these processes are key
son has access to an analytical approach that is foundational in that discipline. features of our musical world in the present day. Telling history in this way
These concepts don’t come naturally: they take practice. Once a person has affords opportunities for assessing the roles of social systems and of individ-
acquired facility with a threshold concept, though, the lights come on: they uals, and seeing how large-scale phenomena play out in individuals’ creative
have a new lens through which they can start to see how different ideas fit lives, or vice versa.18 These histories have also focused on material affordances
together.12 Jan Meyer and Ray Land explain that threshold concepts are “prob- and constraints that shape music-making: this focus can denaturalize our prac-
ably irreversible.”13 Their formulation corresponds to what the feminist writer tices and help us think in new ways about what we do with music, and why.19
Jane O’Reilly called the “click! of recognition”14 —when one’s view of the world Last, a history that shows the entanglement of groups of people with differing
is permanently changed by a particular experience, such that it is impossible to values affords opportunities for critical study of canon formation in different
see things the old way ever again. As O’Reilly put it: when we undergo a change times and places: noticing how others change or defend their values assists us
of this kind, “we have suddenly and shockingly perceived the basic disorder in in interrogating our own.
what has been believed to be the natural order of things.”15 This kind of under- Beginning in the mid-2000s, I developed a general education course,
standing isn’t just understanding the idea once: it’s having the idea become a “Music on the Move in a Globalized World,” focusing on key concerns in global
permanent part of the analytical toolkit for making sense of the world. Ideally, music studies.20 My recent book, Music on the Move, works through a collec-
focusing on these concepts should help our students think like participants in tion of threshold concepts from that course: colonialism, migration, diaspora,
the discipline—giving them access to how academic knowledge and debates are mediation, propaganda, copyright, heritage, and mixing. Each of these con-
structured, and allowing them to try out roles they could play in these debates.16 cepts describes a complex social dynamic: conveying each one requires multiple
If we equip students with concepts of this kind, it gets them closer to being able examples for comparison so that the student can develop a sense of the social
to “read the room.” relationships and patterns the concept names, as well as a sense of how those
Scholarship that engages global music histories offers us a useful array of relationships and patterns relate to musical practices of the past or present.21
threshold concepts for music studies. Following Olivia Bloechl, we might think I chose these concepts because, first, they are analytical tools that enable
of this wide-ranging body of scholarship as “entangled” or “connected” histo- an understanding of our interconnected world in the present. For example, if
ry.17 The perspective cultivated in this work is useful for my purposes because it learners understand the idea of mediation, they are equipped to think about
describes musical traditions not as separate developments that progress on their how music’s meaning is changed when its form is altered, or when it’s handed
own terms, but as part of processes of conflict, exchange, and interconnection.
18. Bloechl, Editorial; Gabriel Solis, “Transpacific Excursions,” in This Thing Called Music:
11. Holly Hassel, Amy Reddinger, and Jessica van Slooten, “Surfacing the Structures of Essays in Honor of Bruno Nettl, ed. Victoria Lindsay Levine and Philip V. Bohlman (Lanham:
Patriarchy: Teaching and Learning Threshold Concepts in Women’s Studies,” International Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 354–65.
Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 5, no. 2, Article 18 (2011), https://doi. 19. For example, Glenda Goodman, “‘But they differ from us in sound’: Indian Psalmody
org/10.20429/ijsotl.2011.050218. and the Soundscape of Colonialism, 1651–75,” The William and Mary Quarterly 69, no. 4 (Oct.
12. Land, Cousin, Meyer, and Davies, “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: 2012): 793–822; Sergio Ospina Romero, “Recording Studios on Tour: The Expeditions of the
Implications for Course Design and Evaluation,” 53–55. Victor Talking Machine Company Through Latin America, 1903–1926” (Ph.D. dissertation,
13. Jan Meyer and Ray Land, “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Linkages Cornell University, 2019); and Rachel Wheeler and Sarah Eyerly, “Singing Box 331: Re-sounding
to Ways of Thinking and Practicing Within the Disciplines,” Occasional Report 4, Enhancing Eighteenth-Century Mohican Hymns from the Moravian Archives,” William and Mary Quarterly
Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses Project, University of Edinburgh 76, no. 4 (Oct. 2019): 649–96, and companion website, https://oieahc.wm.edu/digital-projects/
(May 2003), 4. http://www.etl.tla.ed.ac.uk/docs/ETLreport4.pdf. oi-reader/singing-box-331-rachel-wheeler-sarah-eyerly/hearing-new-histories/.
14. Jane O’Reilly, “The Housewife’s Moment of Truth,” Ms., Spring, 1972. https://msmag- 20. Threshold concepts are particular to disciplines and defined within communities of
azine.com/2021/03/04/from-the-vault-click-the-housewifes-moment-of-truth-ms-magazine- practice: it is unlikely that people across the several music studies fields would all agree on
spring-1972/. which concepts are crucial. As students need both historical and ethnographic approaches to
15. O’Reilly, “The Housewife’s Moment of Truth.” knowledge, my selection and treatment of these concepts has drawn extensively on both musi-
16. Meyer and Land, “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Linkages to cology and ethnomusicology—as does the global music histories literature.
Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines,” 4; Adler-Kassner and Wardle, Preface 21. Music on the Move is a work of synthesis, and its intellectual debts are too numerous
to Naming What We Know, xi, xiv. to name here: I encourage the reader to refer to its bibliography and notes. It is available open
17. Olivia Bloechl, Editorial, Eighteenth-Century Music 17, no. 2 (2020): 173–76. access at https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/m613n040s.
to a new user. If they have encountered compelling music about experiences nationalism, which had already come up in earlier chapters; this chapter also
of migration, that will help them understand people and processes they will highlights the global power asymmetries that inspired processes of modern-
encounter in other areas of their lives. Second, these concepts connect inquiry ization and Europeanization in Japan and Turkey. The power of the state to
about the past with students’ present concerns, and they can therefore be inte- constrain or support musicians (Paul Robeson, Cui Jian) or promote particular
grated into the kind of undergraduate music studies course that is common styles (mass song, heritage displays, music diplomacy) is an important theme
in our universities. Last, these concepts help us educate students not only as here.
musicians but as citizens, providing them with strategies for thinking about People today live in a wash of mediated and mixed music; they do not
equity, access, and justice. Music on the Move begins by inviting the reader always consider where it comes from, what it represents, who put it there,
to examine their own musical world(s), and what kinds of interpersonal or or for what purpose. This middle section is meant to help the reader see the
long-distance connections are relevant for them. The chapters that follow take purposes and interests that underlie music’s mediation and identify how and
up the threshold concepts, which overlap and build upon one another as the why people make different musical choices in different situations. (This idea
volume proceeds. corresponds to my learning objective “a” described above: explaining multiple
The first part of the book, entitled “Migration,” describes music that moves musical value systems and priorities.) This section of the book also encourages
with its makers through processes of diaspora and migration. These three readers to practice discerning how musical purposes and interests operate at
chapters are delimited geographically: they take up colonialism in Indonesia; various scales, from individual musicians’ or communities’ aspirations to the
the Romani diaspora in Europe; and the African diaspora in the United States. political agendas of states or empires. Being able to describe how musical pro-
Focusing each of these chapters on a specific interaction between peoples allowed cesses connect with large-scale social forces is a kind of pattern recognition: it
me to introduce information about the historical reasons for the movement requires abstracting elements from one case and applying them to a new case.
of people and some terms describing the blending, clashing, or appropriation (This idea corresponds to my learning objective “b” described above: analytical
of musics, while still offering enough different examples and stories to show or “system” thinking.) This kind of thinking is a strength of the scholarship on
multiple perspectives. The chapter on colonialism examines social violence global music histories.22
and musical assimilation in Indonesia, as well as the alteration of traditions The third section of the book, “Mashup,” addresses in more detail how indi-
through state-sanctioned tourism and the appropriation of Indonesian musical vidual musicians’ creative choices interact with global forces like migration,
styles by people elsewhere. Throughout these chapters, I tried to be clear about mediation, and neoliberalism. Chapter 6 examines several individual musicians’
the formative power relationships engendered by occupation, the capture and contrasting strategies of appropriation, with an eye toward the different mean-
enslavement of peoples, and state and corporate seizure of resources: I partic- ings appropriation can produce depending on who’s doing it and what they’re
ularly wanted readers to cultivate empathy with peoples who have experienced mixing together. Chapter 7 presents concepts of copyright and ownership and
duress. At the same time, I wanted them to recognize the many kinds of inge- shows how artists and communities in the global south have challenged inter-
nuity with which musicians have adapted to face challenging circumstances. national copyright enforcement regimes to create their own economic niches.
The next section, entitled “Mediation,” offers eclectic examples chosen to Chapter 8 examines situations in which a music from one place has become
highlight specific uses of music, with the aim of helping readers see clearly the localized in another place, with particular attention to several kinds of Korean
human purposes and strategies that underlie musical decision-making. These American music; and to hip hop musicians in South Africa, Morocco, and
chapters address situations in which sound recording and/or political aspira- Egypt. This section of the book calls attention to individuals’ creative agency,
tions have moved music from one place to another—sometimes through edu- which interacts with larger dynamics such as state support or constraint, the
cational or diplomatic travel, but often through printed, recorded, or broadcast desire to connect with a distant home, and the assertion of ownership over a
media. The early history of recording affords a discussion of motivations for musical style from elsewhere. These cases, too, reflect learning objectives “a”
sound archiving and folk-song collection. The sound recording chapter also
discusses a variety of new sound-worlds created by manipulating recorded 22. See, for example, Bloechl, “Editorial”; Solis, “Transpacific Excursions”; Hyun Kyong
audio, including musique concrète; electronic dance music; and the improb- Hannah Chang, “Colonial Circulations: Japan’s Classroom Songbooks in Korea, 1910–1945,”
Ethnomusicology Forum 27, no. 2 (2018): 157–183; and Erika Supria Honisch, Ferran Escrivà-
able stylistic mixes that filled the profitable market niche of “world music.”
Llorca, and Tess Knighton, “On the Trail of a Knight of Santiago: Collecting Music and Mapping
Considering the role of nation-states in chapter 5 allows a re-examination of Knowledge in Renaissance Europe,” Music and Letters 101, no. 3 (August 2020): 397–453.
and “b”: by presenting related and comparable but distinct cases, I hope that that interrogates global power relationships and their effects on music-making.
readers will practice using the concepts; recognize common patterns among This unit could not have been put together without Erika Supria Honisch and
the situations; and get a feel for what factors are important in shaping different Giovanni Zanovello’s “Inclusive Early Music” database.25 The unit was designed
outcomes in different cases. so that students would see several different instances of colonialism and start
Because Music on the Move is not limited to one genre or style of music, but to understand how the big geopolitical picture affects details of music-making.
organized by threshold concepts, it invites the text’s users to bring in their own Most importantly, as we examined each new case, I gradually asked them to
examples. It does not reflect a closed canon of valued works, but introduces contribute more and more of their own interpretation.
ideas that readers can apply to music they care about—whether that music is This conversation was prefigured by coverage of Iberian music earlier in
covered in the book or not. For teachers, the threshold concept structure affords the course, focusing on the multi-ethnic history of the region, long-distance
the opportunity to build a course that connects to repertoires not covered in the connections, and music on seafaring topics. The colonialism unit introduced
book, each of which might offer a different opportunity to apply the ideas. In several different scenes of conflict. We started by contrasting musics of Spanish
some ways, this strategy resembles a “case studies” approach; here, the thresh- occupiers and indigenous Mexíca and Inca peoples.26 Drawing on scholarship of
old concepts from global music history have guided the choice and ordering of Bloechl, Glenda Goodman, and Katie Graber, we talked about conflict between
cases, with the aim of creating a set of tools that equips the reader to approach French and English settlers and Native Americans in New England and what
music’s entangled history.23 is now Canada, focusing on music’s role as a form of resistance and situations
Repetition of terms and concepts both within a chapter and throughout where Native people adopted or adapted Christian musical practices. Bloechl’s
the volume—always in new configurations—was an essential strategy. Ideally, work provided a model of “counter-storytelling”; by reading the Jesuit Relations
by the end the reader has met enough cases to have developed a sense of how against the grain, she brings forward specific and vivid stories of Native peo-
certain kinds of situations generally tend to work. Michael Figueroa has rightly ples’ resistance to French Jesuit colonizers that show how performance was part
warned that we should take care not to make generalizations that “obscure the of the conflict.27 A section of Chapter 1 of Music on the Move, on colonialism in
distinctiveness of local histories and sounds.”24 At the same time, the intellectual Indonesia, served as fodder for a comparative discussion section.
work of becoming familiar with multiple instances of a similar dynamic seems Drawing on work of Maria Ryan, Eileen Southern, Rhiannon Giddens, the
essential for cultivating the ability to “read the room.” Encountering several McIntosh County Shouters, and the Musical Passage project, we spent two class
related cases helps the vocabulary stick, but also helps the social relationships sessions on early African American music. This lecture and discussion brought
and human problems described in the cases start to seem familiar—and that is in questions of method in colonial situations: how we study this music, what
what makes the threshold concept useful when readers encounter it in a new the sources are like, and how we interpret those sources. My partner teacher
situation. in Spring 2021, Phoebe Hughes, relied on the work of Portia Maultsby, Travis
Stimeling, and Kayla Tokar in her lecture about Black music in the colonies
Global Music Histories and the Music Major that would become the United States, including the suppression of drums after
25. Erika Supria Honisch and Giovanni Zanovello, “Inclusive Early Music,” https://inclu-
I developed Music on the Move through teaching a general education course,
siveearlymusic.org. I also owe several of my choices to a repertoire list from Reba Wissner.
but I have also begun integrating these concepts into music majors’ course- 26. Lorenzo Candelaria, “Bernardino de Sahagún’s Psalmodia Christiana: A Catholic
work, where the balance of topics has traditionally tipped more strongly toward Songbook from Sixteenth-Century New Spain,” Journal of the American Musicological Society
Europe. In teaching a survey of music before 1750, I included a substantial 67, no. 3 (2014): 619–684; Beatriz Aguilar, Darhyl Ramsey, and Barry Lumsden, “The Aztec
Empire and the Spanish Missions: Early Music Education in North America,” Journal of
multi-week unit on colonialism, relying on a broad array of recent scholarship
Historical Research in Music Education 24, no. 1 (Oct. 2002): 62–82.
27. Olivia Bloechl, “Listening as a Contact Zone in the Jesuit Relations: A Global History
23. On using case studies to teach music history, see Sara Haefeli, Teaching Music History Approach,” Lecture given at The Ohio State University, September 2019; Bloechl, “Wendat
With Cases: A Teacher’s Guide (New York: Routledge, 2022), 18–25; and Sara Haefeli and Song and Carnival Noise in the Jesuit Relations,” Native Acts: Indian Performance, 1603–1832
Andrew dell’Antonio, interview with Will Robin, “Sound Expertise” (podcast), https://soun- (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 117–144; Goodman, “‘But they differ from us in
dexpertise.org/teaching-music-history-with-sara-haefeli-and-andrew-dellantonio/. sound’”; Katie Graber and Geraldine Baltzer, “‘Twas in the moon of wintertime’ not included in
24. Michael A. Figueroa, “Decolonizing ‘Intro to World Music?’” Journal of Music History new Mennonite hymnal,” Canadian Mennonite (16 December 2019), https://canadianmenno-
Pedagogy 10, no. 1 (2020): 45. https://www.ams-net.org/ojs/index.php/jmhp/article/view/308. nite.org/stories/huron-carol-new-hymnal.
the Stono Rebellion of 1739 and the African American tradition of celebrat- The students in our survey courses typically demonstrate varied levels of
ing Pinkster Day.28 These two class meetings, more than any others, helped my investment. So far, designing curriculum so that threshold concepts are high-
first-year students understand musicologists’ methods in reconstructing histo- lighted and unavoidable seems to have positive effects. For less engaged stu-
ries from a variety of source materials. dents, the unit on colonialism caught their attention because the ideas we were
Overall, this unit was still set up like a “survey” in that participants listened considering were sometimes shocking, delivering immediacy and relevance
to a lot of pieces and learned some historical context that relates to those pieces. they did not expect. For students who were already motivated to learn but who
But the skill I was targeting was being able to apply the idea of colonialism in had been trained to see classical music as “apolitical,” this unit asked them to
interpreting a situation. By the time we got to the African American material, apply prior knowledge about social conflict to music they thought was separate
students had seen several cases, and they were readily using ideas and terms from it. For some, this request chipped at their silos, helping them think more
from the conversations we had had before. As the unit progressed I could elicit clearly about what music is and does. Several students told me they had never
more and more independent interpretive work from them during class discus- learned that colonization was harmful, or that it mattered for music; some
sions. I was routinely asking them to contribute their “read” on situations, and reflected on the role of powerful institutions and connected course material
their observations were becoming more accurate and insightful. By the end of to social justice concerns in the present; and a few mentioned wanting to hold
the unit they were able to draw parallels between situations we had studied and onto the style of thinking practiced in this course.
cases from their own experience that we hadn’t talked about at all—this gave Our current generation of undergraduates seems hungry for this kind of
me some confidence that the concept of colonialism and the strategy of reading learning—course content that helps them think about their musical and social
situations had stuck with them. worlds and expands their analytical toolkit. The newly adopted curriculum at
As an organizing principle, the threshold concept helped me to choose and Ohio State includes a course entitled Global Music Histories, as well as one
organize the pieces we would study. We have moved away from using text- on Musical Citizenship. As we continue to discern what is essential to cover,
books in our musicology courses for the music majors, but that decision has scholarship that explores global music histories has been an essential resource
meant choosing new materials and crafting narratives from scratch. The utility and a stimulus pushing us in new directions.
of threshold concepts is that they give me a sense of purpose that underlies the
selection of topics and materials. Here I was choosing repertory not only for
its own sake, but also as music that shed light on entangled histories, with the
aim of cultivating interpretive skills for reading musical style and style’s social
meanings. As we continue to adjust the balance between European genres and
all the other music we want to cover in our music major courses, threshold
concepts seem a useful way to name our guiding purposes and hold ourselves
to them.
28. Laurent Dubois, David K. Garner, and Mary Caton Lingold, “Musical Passage” (2016),
http://www.musicalpassage.org/#explore; Portia K. Maultsby, “The Translated African Cultural
and Musical Past,” in Mellonee V. Burnim and Portia K. Maultsby, eds., African American Music:
An Introduction, 2nd edn. (New York: Routledge, 2015), 3–22; McIntosh County Shouters,
“Gullah-Geechee Ring Shout from Georgia,” performance at the Library of Congress (2011),
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxPU5517u8c; Maria Ryan, “Hearing Power, Sounding
Freedom: Black Practices of Listening, Ear-Training, and Music-Making in the British Colonial
Caribbean” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2021); Eileen Southern, ed., Readings in
Black American Music (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972); Travis D. Stimeling and Kayla Tokar,
“Narratives of Musical Resilience and the Perpetuation of Whiteness in the Music History
Classroom,” Journal of Music History Pedagogy 10, no. 1 (2020): 20–38; John Jeremiah Sullivan,
“Rhiannon Giddens and What Folk Music Means,” The New Yorker, 20 May 2019, https://www.
newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/20/rhiannon-giddens-and-what-folk-music-means.
Teaching Music Colonialism in Global History 65
geography, and colonial history; developing critical reading and listening skills;
understanding the diversity of musical practices in different locations in the
Teaching Music Colonialism in Global History: world; and appreciating music as a site of social issues in the past and/or pres-
ent. Among the learning outcomes are topic-specific information and termi-
Pedagogical Pathways and Student Responses nology, and familiarity with critical issues about Western music in colonial and
post-colonial cultures on a global scale. In-class activities include discussing
Roe-Min Kok the complex artistic legacies of colonialism, cultivating inclusive dialogues
about the cultures and histories of diverse communities around the world, and
engaging in self-reflexive critiques to destabilize and counter deeply entrenched
assumptions. The course prepares students to make informed decisions about
E
engaging with postcolonial musics, including leading or participating in initia-
uropean powers colonized about 84% of the globe between 1492 and
tives to decolonize the arts.5
1914.1 Today, the consequences of centuries of domination linger in
The content of MCGH differs from traditional music history courses, which
many former colonies, especially those in the Global South. In addition
typically cover European music in Western settings, and from ethnomusicol-
to devastating long-term effects on slaves and Indigenous people, colonial rule
ogy courses, which typically emphasize traditional and local musics worldwide.
left behind unequal distribution of wealth, social inequalities, poverty, slow
Parallel to ethnomusicology, MCGH features global locations; however, we
economic growth, and low rates of mass education.2 As Aníbal Quijano has
study the receptions and practices of Western (art) music in former colonies
pointed out, European governance also gave birth to a widespread mindset,
and our approach is heavily informed by critical theories from the field of
“coloniality,” in which “European or Western culture imposed its paradigmatic
Postcolonial Studies. Having designed the course in 2015 with the support of
image and its principle cognitive elements as the norm of orientation on all
a fellowship from McGill University’s then-Institute for the Public Life of Arts
cultural development, particularly the intellectual and the artistic.” Former
and Ideas, I first offered MCGH to graduate students in Fall 2016. A year later,
colonies, according to Quijano, were “pushed into Europeanisation of every-
I adapted the course for undergraduates. Since its inception, I have taught the
thing or in part.” Even though “colonialism as an explicit political order was
class four times at the undergraduate level and six times as a graduate seminar.
destroyed,” Quijano asserts that it “is still the most general form of domination
Although both levels make use of the same core materials, the formats, reading
in the world today.”3
loads, assignments, and expectations are tailored to the respective educational
How did the music and musical practices brought by colonizers affect those
stages.
in the colonies, and vice versa? What European cultural value systems travelled
In this article I explain how I teach MCGH at the undergraduate level
global routes via music? And how did local communities receive, negotiate, and
(including methods and materials), and reflect upon the effectiveness of my
re-invent them? The course “Music Colonialism in Global History” (MCGH)
pedagogical approach by analyzing what students took away in relation to
seeks to answer these and related questions by probing global musics vis-à-
the class’s learning objectives and learning outcomes. For the latter exercise, I
vis coloniality and its inherent power structures.4 Overall learning objectives
solicited student responses to a questionnaire with broadly-couched queries.
include increasing basic understanding of the relationship between music,
This article is divided into three sections. After describing the course’s practi-
1. Philip Hoffman, Why Did Europe Conquer the World? (Princeton: Princeton University cal aspects (format, setup, examples of readings), I present and summarize the
Press, 2015), 2, see also 3, n5 students’ commentaries. They were invited to articulate what they had gained
2. Hoffman, Why Did Europe, 208. from the course, evaluate the materials and pedagogical tools used, and suggest
3. Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality,” Cultural Studies 21 nos. 2–3
(2007): 170. adjustments to the course content and approach. In the third and last section, I
4. I originally coined the term “music colonialism” for the Oxford Handbook of Music 5. Numerous scholars and policy makers have highlighted education’s crucial role in decol-
Colonialism when the Handbook was contracted several years ago. Co-edited by Erin Johnson- onizing initiatives. For instance, a report forged by Canadian Indigenous communities and the
Williams, Yvonne Liao and me, the volume is forthcoming in 2024. This article marks the first Canadian government, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action (2015),
appearance of the term in print. calls for “Developing culturally appropriate curricula,” 10.iii, 2; and “Building student capacity
for intercultural understanding, empathy, and mutual respect,” 63.iii, 7. https://publications.
64 gc.ca/site/eng/9.801236/publication.html (accessed June 12, 2022).
66 Journal of Music History Pedagogy Teaching Music Colonialism in Global History 67
summarize what MCGH and its pedagogies achieve, and offer thoughts on the They have two weeks in which to write a “Summary, Evaluation, and Critique”
course’s significance and goals for the longer term. of the publication. For the final project, I ask students to give an in-class oral
presentation accompanied by a detailed handout. They select one of two pos-
I. Practical Aspects sible pathways: either they examine a former colony and its musical traditions
in light of its colonial history, or they write an autoethnographic, self-reflexive
For music majors at my university, MCGH represents an elective that fulfills account of their experiences learning and playing Western art music, using
one of two required upper-level music history courses. Given the interdisci- critical concepts from postcolonial, cultural, race, and gender theories.
plinary nature and breadth of the topic, however, I decided from the beginning
to cross-list the course so that non-music majors may also enroll (class size is II. Student Responses
capped at 20). The pre-requisites for music majors include first- and second-year
music history courses; for non-music students there are none. By welcoming What are students learning from the course and its global components? In
intellectually curious participants from across campus, I simulate a liberal arts April 2022 I contacted seven (out of seventeen) students who had taken MCGH
classroom setting (within a large music conservatory) that brings the field of in Fall 2021 and invited them to submit written responses of 1000–2000 words
music into interdisciplinary conversation with the hydra-headed phenomenon to three questions. Five accepted.7 I selected students who had been particularly
of colonialism/ coloniality. This arrangement is also intended to fuel peer edu- engaged in the course, as I believed they would provide thoughtful comments. I
cation between music and non-music undergraduates. The class meets once a designed open-ended questions that encompassed the impact of the course, the
week for three hours to discuss reading and listening assignments. Each week, effectiveness of the course materials, and possible revisions to the course design.
we focus on particular themes or aspects of colonialism/coloniality, which are I present a sampling of the students’ responses below.8 Overall, respondents had
illustrated through readings that present thought-provoking, debate-worthy enjoyed the course, citing its content and approach as perspective-changing in
issues along with case studies from different parts of the world. Weekly themes the context of their experience. Previously unaware of connections between
include “Zones of Contact,”6 “Diversity, Difference, Hybridity,” and “Politics of music and colonialism/coloniality (particularly in terms of political and other
Resistance and Race” (see Appendix One). power relations), they had found the readings and cultural theories enlighten-
Aligning with the course content’s ideals of global, inclusive dialogue and ing and useful tools for thinking about global social justice.
cultural equality, the class format cultivates a non-hierarchical, shared, and
engaged classroom. For example, I allow students to select readings rather than Question 1: How has MCGH contributed to your understanding of our ever-glo-
assigning them directly. Here’s how it works. At the end of class, I project a list balizing world, and the place of “Western art music” within it?
of possible readings and explain how each relates to the following week’s theme. Students reported that the course had enlarged their intellectual and geopo-
Students then come to a consensus about the reading(s) we should cover. They litical horizons and enhanced their awareness of the power structures underly-
are required to post weekly “Reflective Questions” about the selected publica- ing the music industry worldwide. NYH wrote:
tion(s) in the course’s Learning Management System. Occasionally, a particular
student is attracted to readings beyond those selected collectively. I list such MCGH established music and art as inherently political acts that cannot be
extra readings as “optional” and invite the interested student to summarize separated from the social context of power. The discussions and materials
taught me that music has historically been used by institutions of power as
and present them (or one of them) to the entire class. In addition to weekly tools of oppression, and to a certain extent these hierarchical constructions
“Reflective Questions,” I assign a midterm and a final project. For the midterm, are embedded in the essence of the art form itself; but more importantly, that
a take-home task, students read and review an article or book chapter which
7. I thank the respondents for their thoughtful, lively remarks. I am also grateful to the
they individually select from a list of items not previously addressed in class. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for funding the survey.
Each student received CAD 500. Since they had already received their grades, I anticipated
6. Inspired by Mary Louise Pratt’s notion of “contact zones” which are “social spaces where neither risks nor conflict-of-interest issues. They chose a preferred mode of identification from
disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical rela- a given list and gave me permission to publish their answers. Unless volunteered by individuals,
tions of domination and subordination—like colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they information about gender, ethnicity, citizenship, major, and year in the student’s program is not
are lived out across the globe today.” Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, 2nd ed. included.
(London: Routledge, 2008), 4. 8. Responses have been edited for clarity and concision.
music can be a useful tool toward liberation and empowering self-determi- To Alan Vlaykov, the course was intriguing but also puzzling. He had had little
nation for marginalized peoples in the contemporary culture industry. It was background in music and sensed that musicians share a subculture in which he
fascinating to explore the two aspects with nuanced class discussion, learn-
ing from different global perspectives to gain a deeper understanding of the perceived certain unexamined beliefs. Between the readings and his interac-
intricacies of music as a political tool. The discussion of music in “post-co- tions with classmates, Vlaykov realized that the attitudes appear to stem from
lonial” countries such as Singapore in particular was very illuminating and the traditional pedagogical model used in applied music lessons, a model that
helped me learn more about the ways in which music remains a symbol for has disseminated worldwide through colonialism.
prestige and acceptance in the globalizing world.
I came into this class not knowing almost anything about Western art music.
Milton Rosenbaum found the class eye-opening when compared to his pre- After all, I am an economics major and music had no role in my previous
vious experiences with “Music History.” He likened his shift in perspective to thought about globalization which had always been a social and economic
his experience of reading Helen Gordon’s Notes from Deep Time, a book detail- phenomenon for me. The course changed my view on the world. It has added
a completely new layer of understanding. I realized that the way music is
ing the geological development of our planet.9 taught fundamentally contributes to its practitioners’ ideas of the world. Not
only through the readings done for the course but through conversation with
The class was key to shaping the way I look at music as a whole. Music has my classmates. Many preconceptions and ideas that were presented by my
become less of a static collection of songs and composers and more of a long- peers did not make sense to me. Some things were taken as given and not
form, single story. I can now appreciate songs as single points in a larger nar- questioned.11 I could not comprehend why but these made more sense after I
rative of cultural exchange and domination. Before entering the class, state- understood the way music is taught. Overall, my understanding of the world
ments like “Beethoven is the greatest composer of all time” were axiomatic, has been expanded.
but the class allowed me to question and identify similar thoughts. Gordon’s
conception of the world as almost a liquid substance, flowing under complex
interacting forces, closely mirrors how classes like this can help you see the On her part, WJ was aware of debates about Western art music in the Global
social world. Countries and cultural concepts stop being fixed and instead North, but the music’s continued influence in the Global South astonished her.
become contingent on the social forces that shape them. MCGH helped me She was especially struck by how Western music education had been adopted
apply that understanding in a deep and nuanced way to music. I was already far from its place of origin, and critically contemplated her own learning
aware, for instance, of lingering neocolonial and cultural colonialism in East
Asia. However, I was surprised to learn that many of these countries still experiences—which she elegantly termed “musical interpellation” (after Louis
“authentically” venerate Western styles of music. MCGH equipped me with Althusser).12
a theoretical framework to understand this domination-by consent.10
It had been brought to my attention in music history classes that Western
Excited that the course was available at all, Yuval Tessman-Bar-On found classical music continues to promote outdated colonial ideals through the
traditional works that modern establishments choose to perform. However,
that: it was only in taking MCGH that I truly understood how intrinsically con-
nected colonialism is to Western classical music, not only in terms of content
MCGH profoundly influenced my interests in feminism, transnational fem- but additionally through music education in former colonies. I had not real-
inism, and global music traditions. It allowed me to discover the complex ized the extent to which our supposedly modern musical institutions con-
ways in which music fits into narratives of colonialism, displacement, immi- tinued to uphold outdated and problematic power structures through their
gration, diaspora, global issues of social justice, and how the musical and cul- steadfast adherence to traditional teaching practices. This course helped me
tural lives of post-colonial nations are impacted by histories of colonialism.
11. Entrenched practices can remain unquestioned for a long time. After a class discussion
about hiring practices in orchestras, a Business Management major who took MCGH several
years ago expressed shock that music has only recently begun to address workplace inequities.
9. Helen Gordon, Notes from Deep Time: A Journey through our Past and Future Worlds She explained that the topic is well developed in her own field, and at least thirty years old.
(London: Profile Books, 2021). 12. I had introduced the concept via “Notes on Interpellation,” an open-access handout
10. The phrase “domination by consent” comes from “Education,” in The Post-Colonial by Chris McGee based on Louis Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes
Studies Reader, 2nd ed., eds. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffith and Helen Tiffin (Oxford: Routledge, towards an Investigation,” in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster
2006), 371. For the origins of this idea, see Antonio Gramsci’s “On Education,” in Selections (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001), 85–126.
from the Prison Notebooks, translated and edited by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith McGee’s handout can be found at “Notes on Interpellation,” https://www.longwood.edu/
(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2003), 24–43. staff/mcgeecw/notesoninterpellation.htm (accessed March 17, 2020).
examine the musical interpellation I inherited from my teachers, peers, and for each person in the class to pick their region and paper allowed each stu-
from Western society in general. It helped me re-contextualize my own expe- dent far more self-expression than is usually present in these courses.
riences as a pupil struggling to learn in colonial master-pupil dichotomies.
(Vlaykov) The most effective pedagogical tool in the course were the in-class
These responses confirmed that MCGH had successfully achieved (and in dialogues and discussions. The class was centered around creating an envi-
ronment that encouraged presenting new ideas and challenging the readings
some ways, exceeded) its learning objectives: increasing basic understanding of and our peers which encouraged us to comprehensively read and really think
the relationship of music, geography, and colonial history; developing critical about the deeper meaning, to formulate questions for in-class discussions. It
reading and listening skills; understanding the diversity of musical practices in allowed for new ideas that I may have missed to be discussed by my peers and
different locations in the world; and appreciating music as a site of social issues opened up my eyes to so many new concepts that I would have never discov-
ered before. I was able to grasp these concepts in a much deeper way than I
in the past and/or present. could’ve through a lecture. Personally, being from an economics background
I was intrigued by the opinions of my fellow classmates from music. It was
Question 2: The pedagogical tools used in the course included readings and evident that their way of critiquing and understanding critical concepts was
assigned written responses, in-class dialogue and discussions, a review essay, and different from my own. I was also encouraged to share my opinions which
also would not have been possible in a lecture. Through sharing I hopefully
a final project. gave a new perspective to my peers about the way they have learnt about the
world through their musical education.
Question 2a: Which do you think was/were most effective in delivering the
course content? Elaborate on your responses, including reasons for the points you NYH noticed the emphasis I placed on critical thinking:
make.
Student respondents had enjoyed the course materials and pedagogical Similarly, the assigned written responses and reflective questions were a good
methods. Praising the readings’ rich content, high quality, and accessibility, way to [ensure engagement and] encourage critical thinking … through the
act of formulating a question, to be discussed in class. I enjoyed the way
they highlighted the stimulating class discussions and appreciated the oppor- class discussions were organized because of this, because there was a per-
tunity to share and discuss Reflective Questions. Many discovered exciting new sonal touch to the structured discussions in a way that would be absent if
points of connection with the materials while working on their midterm essays it was entirely facilitated and decided by the instructor. From this, we were
and final projects. Several expressed gratitude for the flexible approach I took also able to bring in our own insights from outside of the assigned reading
materials and enrich the discussion, which really helped my understanding
toward the selection of readings. of the material. Including instances where my classmates brought in their
own life experiences or contemporary examples of the readings’ claims in
(NYH) The readings were very effective in delivering the course content, today’s culture industry, I thought it was very useful toward establishing an
especially as the instructor allowed students the freedom to choose the spe- enriching discussion of the course material in a sensitive and refreshing way.
cific readings for each prescribed weekly topic. Readings were usually chal-
lenging in an intellectually stimulating way, but were not inaccessible. Giving
students a choice also made the course content easier to engage with and Students lauded the intermingling of music and non-music majors, which pro-
benefitted in-class discussions, since it made the topics a bit more personal duced fruitful exchanges:
and approachable to students. The midterm essay was also very enjoyable and
helpful in my learning process. Again, I appreciate the instructor’s flexibility (Tessman-Bar-On) Another strength of this class was that it naturally
in allowing students to complete the assignment on their article of choice encouraged interdisciplinary thought and discussion. The course included
from the list of options, and I was able to write on one that was particularly both music students (which include performance students, musicology stu-
fascinating to me. dents, and others) and arts students (including students in cultural studies
and sociology, among other fields). The instructor’s enthusiasm for this inter-
(Rosenbaum) I loved the in-class discussions. Each student brought their disciplinarity encouraged students to allow our varying expertise to intersect
perspectives and understanding for each paper. Even though none of us and inform our discussions.
individually were able to glean every useful bit from each paper, with the
instructor’s help, we were usually able to come to a deep understanding of
each paper. I enjoyed the midterm essay and final project. The opportunity Exploring the presence of Western art music around the globe, many students
were attracted to specific case studies that sparked searching reflections on
their part. For some, the midterm review essay became a powerful vehicle for Mandate of Palestine, and the music involved in these contexts. Because of
intellectual discoveries. my in-depth interaction with music of the Cyprus Detention camps in this
project, I developed an interest in further pursuing the study of music of the
wider Arab-Israeli conflict, which I could see growing into a significant part
(NYH) My midterm essay focused on an article about the Singapore Chinese of my future scholarship.
Orchestra, which discussed issues of cultural hybridity in post-colonial
societies. The article was particularly illuminating in its exposition of the
Orchestra’s programming to frame the institution’s cultural identity as fluid In a wholly unexpected way, WJ’s final project fundamentally changed her per-
and contingent on the specific context and site of articulation.13 I was able sonal outlook. The newfound knowledge enabled her to recontextualize her
to critically engage with it in a way I don’t get to very often in other courses, experiences with her mixed-race family and parents.
and it’s one of the articles that have stuck with me the most from the course,
even after the end of the semester.
The final presentation also effectively reinforced the course content. The
nature of the assignment allowed for rigorous research into a former col-
(WJ) The midterm review essay was very effective in delivering the course ony which could also include a personal touch. Depending on how closely
content, as it provided students with the time and space required to examine the student’s selection was linked to their family history, the impact of their
the inner logical machinations of a specific article and explore its findings research could have a much broader effect beyond their project. I chose to
with a critical lens. The assignment encouraged re-reading, reflecting, mak- research Mauritius, a tiny African island off the coast of Madagascar and
ing connections and broadening students’ understanding of the text and its home to most of my father’s immediate family. I have only visited the island
positioning within the framework of post-colonial studies. Students could twice, and have limited contact with family there. Through my final project,
examine the relationship between the author’s identity and the subject matter I was able to construct a more detailed picture of the colonial history of my
of their article, a crucial step in the identification of any hidden biases or father’s country of origin and share my findings with the class. However,
weaknesses in argument due to cultural inexperience or colonial interpel- my research also enabled me to examine my paternal family’s sociopolitical
lation. An author’s lived experience is the invisible player in post-colonial position on the island as members of the dominant Indo-Mauritian group
research. A close reader must keep the author’s relationship to the content of in a manner that would have otherwise been almost impossible. I was able
their research in mind while reading. Just as an article approached from an to observe and interpret my father’s marriage to my mother, an English-
etic perspective will likely present differing conclusions to one written from speaking Canadian with Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian ancestry, through a
an emic viewpoint, an ancestor of a colonizer and a member of a former heightened and more focused colonial lens. I now have a breadth of colonial
colonial region are likely to have differing perspectives, resources and moti- and cultural context to colour and contextualize my personal struggles with
vations when writing about an identical topic. my colonial identity, as well as the intergenerational trauma and colonial
interpellation experienced by my father, his siblings, and their ancestors
In a few cases, the intellectual journey took a deeply personal turn. Tessman- at the hands of the ancestors of my mother. The tools and terminology I
acquired through taking this course are now integral to my understanding of
Bar-On researched her family background for her oral presentation. She shared:
my family’s history in a way I could never have anticipated.
The final project was particularly effective, I think, because it was flexible. The
project gave students the opportunity to choose one of two directions. The Several other students (not polled) also explored their personal backgrounds in
first was to present about a country with a history of colonialism and chart the relation to their music studies. Tessman-Bar-On attributed the interest in such
development of musical traditions in that country, with particular attention projects to my essay that we had studied in class.
to how colonialism interacted with this musical development. The second
option was to present a personal experience of colonialism and discuss how
it impacted one’s own musical development and life. Many students (not only A pedagogy that the instructor employed was centering her personal experi-
those who chose the second option) talked about subjects and countries to ences of learning music in Malaysia, in a music education system influenced
which they had a personal or familial connection. I presented on the Cyprus by the legacy of British colonial rule and entrenched ideas of the superiority
Detention camps, where my family was held as they immigrated, in the years of Western art music.14 This not only demonstrated the significance of the
before 1948, to what would become Israel; this involved researching family work we were doing in the course, but it also modeled to students how to
history and documents in addition to doing research on Cyprus, the British
14. Roe-Min Kok, “Music for a Postcolonial Child: Theorizing Malaysian Memories,”
13. Shzr Ee Tan, “A Chinese Take(Away) of Brahms: How the Singapore Chinese Orchestra in Musical Childhoods and the Cultures of Youth, ed. Susan Boynton and Roe-Min Kok
Courted Europe,” Wacana seni/Journal of Arts Discourse 11 (2012): 127–148. Respondents also (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2006), 89–104; reprinted in Learning, Teaching,
found memorable the writings of Kofi Agawu, Homi Bhabha, Anna Bull, Stuart Hall, Susan and Musical Identity: Voices across Cultures, ed. Lucy Green (Bloomington: Indiana University
Neylan and Melissa Meyer, Edward Said, Amanda Weidman, and Mari Yoshihara. Press, 2011), 73–90.
reflect on one’s own personal experience in a scholarly way, as the final proj- Students would often use their weekly reflective question assignments to
ect allowed us to do. summarize the articles, instead of stimulating thought-provoking discus-
sion. This issue was addressed mid-way through the term, with noticeable
improvement.17 However, the structuring of class discussions around stu-
dents’ reflective questions posed another challenge. Since the onus was
Question 2b: Which was/were less effective in delivering the course content? placed on students to volunteer their reflective questions for discussion, the
Elaborate on your responses, including reasons for the points you make. topics tended to originate from a small number of students who were com-
fortable reading their questions aloud to the class. This led to less diversity in
Respondents shared constructive and useful criticism on the pedagogical
terms of responders and, consequently, perspectives.18
approach in MCGH. Some found that the sheer breadth of materials led to
difficulty in narrowing the topic of final projects. Listening to her classmates’
To encourage more profound engagement among her classmates, Tessman-
oral presentations, NYH thought that “the scope for the first [topic] was a bit
Bar-On suggested expanding the weekly assignments:
too wide for the students; too broad for comprehensive analysis in many cases,”
and suggested: I think many of the students would have been willing to engage the material
in a way similar to that of a graduate seminar. The discussion questions were
Encourage students to focus on a specific aspect of the former colony’s useful because they set a starting point for class discussion but could have
relationship with music, such as their contemporary classical music scene, sparked deeper discussion if students had been offered the opportunity to
the conservatories and music education program, popular music within the write more each week written and posted summaries and engagements with
country today, prominent uses of music in key political moments, etc., so the readings, for instance.
that there is more room for comprehensive analysis within the presentation,
rather than simply an exposition on the country’s history with colonialism
and music.15 The responses to Questions 2a and 2b reinforced my learning objectives
for MCGH, but also extended them in unexpected ways. Through first-hand
Although Rosenbaum had enjoyed both the midterm and final projects, he engagement in readings and class discussions, the midterm review and the
wished for an oral exchange in the former: “the final project was far more useful. final project, students learned to probe music’s position within global colonial
Focusing on a specific country forced us to apply the concepts we had learned in histories through a critical lens. They relished the regular opportunities for
class on particular manifestations and was excellent practice for research in the in-depth, interdisciplinary debates. They became savvy readers of scholarly
real world. The midterm left no opportunity to hear other students’ thoughts.” arguments and incorporated theoretical concepts such as “domination by con-
He was seconded by Vlaykov. sent” and “interpellation” into their vocabularies (thereby attaining “topic-spe-
cific information and terminology,” among of the course’s learning outcomes).
I believe that the midterm paper was the least effective part of delivering the More unexpectedly, a few respondents in the group, which included a range of
course content. For me, discussing ideas and having meaningful conversa- backgrounds and ethnicities, discovered new ways to understand and connect
tions about key topics in the class were pivotal for the course. Even with the with their familial histories as they realized, for the first time, the impact of
final project we were encouraged to present research questions and answer
questions from our classmates to expand on the topics being spoken about.
coloniality on their own past and present. I found the students’ suggestions for
The midterm paper stood out because of how closed off it was from the reg- adjusting the pedagogical approach helpful and have since either implemented
ular contributive nature of the class.16 them (see footnotes 15 and 17), and/or brought them up in subsequent itera-
tions of the course (footnotes 16 and 18).
WJ was bothered by some of her peers’ limited approach to the weekly postings
and in-class discussions.
15. I have since adopted NYH’s suggestion.

16. In the next iteration of the course I floated the option of a post midterm discussion, 17. WJ contacted me about this issue, which I managed to rectify to an extent
but it failed to gain any support from students. Group dynamics can differ greatly from class 18. For another course in the following term, I divided students into groups of 4–5 by last
to class and are especially pronounced in courses that depend heavily on student engagement name. Each group was assigned to post and lead discussions on specific days, an arrangement
and discussions. that resulted in much more evenly distributed postings and participation.
Question 3: What do you think should be added to and/or subtracted from the etc.) would help prepare students to engage this terminology in well-in-
course? Examples might include assignment prompts, research paper designs, formed ways. This would also help to formalize class discussion, which
would allow students to come away with a sense of how to talk about issues
classroom activities, assessment modalities, and/or other relevant course of colonialism in a scholarly way.
materials.
This question drew a rich panoply of ideas and propositions (I moved some (Vlaykov) Add a brief introduction about the broad topics discussed in the
comments from 2b to this section). Several respondents offered their thoughts readings before the class goes into discussion. A short set of slides would
on further diversifying course content. NYH wrote: have helped me engage in discussions better. Occasionally I found it hard
to talk about certain topics due to a lack of knowledge even if I wanted to
contribute.
Dedicate a specific week to spotlight marginalized or little-known local
musicians, or to encourage initiatives toward music education as a deco-
lonial practice. This would add an important real-world element to round (WJ) Provide students with prompts before they read each article to sharpen
off the important theoretical offerings. With the course evenly split between their focus on certain attributes or concepts and assist them with formulat-
Arts and Music students, each with their own unique perspectives, I believe ing questions. Post-colonial studies borrows concepts, theories and content
opportunities like this would help apply what we have learned in a real-world from a wide variety of disciplines, and the students have varied backgrounds
context, hopefully beneficial to students from all Faculties. so some scaffolding for assigned readings would be helpful such as reading
prompts or full-scale structural aides. Prompts could be created by the pro-
fessor or taken from the reflective questions of past students.
(Tessman-Bar-On) Include the music of refugees, which I think is implied
by the course title and could have been extremely interesting and relevant in
this historical moment. (WJ again) Preparing article summaries would emphasize important terms
and concepts, encourage notetaking and the use of proper terminology
during in-class discussions.
(Vlaykov) Allow us to research and find a publication (related to the course
content) on our own and discuss it with the class. This would promote more
research about topics that individual students find interesting. It would also Seeking deeper engagement were Tessman-Bar-On, who favored assigning a
expand the scope of the course. fully fledged final paper because so many students decided on research topics
that were personally meaningful; and Vlaykov, who requested oral discussions
Many expressed concerns about the theoretical and conceptual difficulty of cer- of the midterm essays. A thornier issue centered on writing skills appropriate
tain readings and requested more structured guidance through the materials. to the coursework. Vlaykov believed that music majors were at a disadvantage
Rosenbaum noted the “speed of the course” in relation to the complex ideas when it came to written work:
presented:
Finally, I believe the format of the midterm examination could have given a
We covered a new reading each week, and while that is not by itself overly major advantage to the students outside of the music school (this includes
demanding, several times we were reading a single piece that could by itself myself). This is because writing papers in strictly academic majors is more
fill up an entire course. I remember the week on Homi Bhabha being particu- common than in majors which focus on the performing arts. I could see it
larly hamstrung. Most people in the room (including myself) struggled with being significantly easier for those who have more practice writing university
his concept of a “third space.” Even had there been a lecture on it beforehand, papers compared to those who don’t do it as often.
I doubt we could have said anything worthwhile having only learned the
term a few days prior.19
Rosenbaum went further, opining that high standards for writing in English
are inappropriate in a class about colonialism. However, he also realized that
(Tessman-Bar-On) In class discussions, students were not being well pre-
pared to think through connections to critical concepts or to other texts. lowering expectations may be inappropriate and/or counterproductive and
Perhaps writing a full discussion post (especially if this were set up by the suggested assigning practice essays.
introduction and clear definition of relevant critical concepts in class—such
as interpellation, indigeneity, hybridity, appropriation, strategic essentialism, I found the focus on precise academic grammar in the grading of the essay a
19. Rosenbaum is referring to Homi Bhabha, “Cultural Diversity and Cultural Differences,” bit strange. I know several music students who had not practiced writing aca-
in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 2nd ed., eds. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffith and Helen Tiffin demically and/or spoke English as a second language. They were blindsided
(London: Routledge, 1994), 206–09. by the way their papers were graded. It also felt somewhat ironic that a class
about the arbitrary standards of Western art music being applied to unfairly America and its musical concerns. Few university music programs currently
denigrate other cultures would so strictly cling to its own set of Western, offer courses about colonialism/coloniality, although many in higher educa-
academic standards. The rest of the course had not emphasized academic
writing, so this issue could even have been fixed by requiring several, smaller tion agree that these notions are important and timely. Imperialistic ambitions
essays, allowing students rusty in their writing to catch up.20 (evident in Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine), and power imbalances in
overt and subtle forms (such as issues faced by Indigenous communities and
Students had found the dense theories and conceptual terminology of other marginalized groups) are just two present-day examples of widespread
Postcolonial Studies illuminating but complex. They agreed on the need for inequitable behaviors that have been stoked and facilitated by the world’s
more careful, step-by-step guidance through these terms in the publications we colonial past. Similarly problematic attitudes arguably underlie the practice of
had read and discussed together. Judging by the respondents’ earlier answers Western music around the world, and MCGH’s global content and postcolo-
to Questions 2a and 2b, however, they appear to have grasped the theoretical nial approach enabled my student respondents to acquire new, complex, and
frameworks well, probably as a result of the effective case studies in each read- nuanced views. They came to understand that the creation, performance, and
ing. To further reinforce student comprehension, I decided to add a concept-fo- practice of music in different global settings may be framed by colonial history
cused guide as a general resource, and I refer to it whenever we come across a and coloniality, and were sensitized to the corresponding power dynamics and
new concept.21 I also explain special terms during class discussions, halting the social-cultural inequities. These perspectives align with the course’s immedi-
conversation temporarily as needed. The contentious issue of academic writing ate learning outcomes: topic-specific information and familiarity with critical
has led me to take concrete steps (see footnote 20). As for enriching the sylla- issues about Western music in colonial and post-colonial cultures on a global
bus, I continue to add fresh themes as well as suitable readings to the course, as scale. Looking to the future and over the longer term, MCGH hopes to advance
each iteration of the class brings a different set of interests into play.22 a strong sense of global citizenship in future generations by cultivating the key
attributes of “intercultural understanding, empathy, and mutual respect.”23
III. Conclusion and Thoughts
Students had begun the term with little or no knowledge of music’s APPENDIX One
connections with global colonialism/coloniality. Their lack of awareness is
unsurprising, as colonialism and its aftermath in music remain relatively dis- Weekly Schedule (course outline with thematic modules and sample readings)
tanced (geographically, historically, and culturally) from contemporary North
Music and Colonialism in Global History
20. Vlaykov and Rosenbaum were probably thinking about a classmate who had been
unhappy about their midterm grade. I had specified that points would be deducted for writ-
ing mistakes and the Department Chair did not accept the student’s charge of unfair grading.
I decided that in the future, I would communicate expectations more clearly, give concrete
Week 1: Introduction to the Interdisciplinary Field of Postcolonial Studies
examples of poor grammar and weak sentence constructions, and refer students to the uni-
versity’s Writing Center early in the term. On language barriers experienced by international
students, see Leon Moosavi, “The Myth of Academic Tolerance: The Stigmatisation of East Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffith and Helen Tiffin, “Introduction,” in The Empire
Asian Students in Western Higher Education,” Asian Ethnicity 23 no. 3 (2022): 484–503 DOI: Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures, 2nd ed., eds.
10.1080/14631369.2021.1882289, and his “‘Can East Asian Students Think?’ Orientalism, Critical Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffith and Helen Tiffin (New York: Routledge, 2002),
Thinking, and the Decolonial Project,” Education Sciences 10, no. 10 (2020): DOI:10.3390/
educsci10100286. For resources on antiracist writing pedagogies, see Asao B. Inoue, Antiracist
1–13.
Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future (Fort Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffith and Helen Tiffin, “General Introduction,” and
Collins: WAC Clearinghouse, 2015) and Amherst College’s recommendations at “Antiracist
“Introduction to the Second Edition,” in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader,
Writing Pedagogy,” accessed March 18, 2023, https://www.amherst.edu/academiclife/support/
writingcenter/faculty/pedagogy/antiracist-writing-pedagogy. 2nd ed., eds. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffith and Helen Tiffin (New York:
21. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts Routledge, 2006), 1–4, 5–8.
(3rd edition), (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013).
22. For instance, many students in the course this term (Winter 2023) are from STEM 23. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action (2015): 63.iii, 7, https://
disciplines, which are examining their own discipline-specific legacies of colonialism. publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.801236/publication.html.
Ziauddin Sardar and Borin van Loon, Introducing Cultural Studies. A Graphic Week 5: Vocal Cultures and Identities
Guide (London: Icon, 2010), 3–55, 70–72, 78–80. Nina Eidsheim, “Formal and Informal Pedagogies: Believing in Race, Teaching
Race, Hearing Race,” in The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality
Week 2: Zones of Contact in African American Music (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019), 39–60.
Mari Yoshihara, “Chapter 1: Early Lessons in Globalization,” in Musicians Grant Olwage, “The Class and Colour of Tone: An Essay on the Social History
from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music of Vocal Timbre,” Ethnomusicology Forum 13, no. 2 (2004): 203–26.
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007), 11–48. Ana Maria Ochoa Gautier, “On Howls and Pitches,” in Aurality: Listening
David R. M. Irving, “Lully in Siam: Music and Diplomacy in French-Siamese and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Colombia (Durham: Duke University
Cultural Exchanges, 1680–1690,” Early Music XL, no. 3 (2012): 393–420. Press, 2014), 31–75.
Barbara Alge, “Transatlantic Musical Flows in the Lusophone World: An
Introduction,” Special Issue “Transatlantic Musical Flows in the Lusophone Week 6: midterm Assessment (take-home)
World,” ed. Barbara Alge, The World of Music (New Series) 2, no. 2 (2013):
7–24. Week 7: Diversity, Difference, Hybridity
Robert Young, “Hybridity and Diaspora,” in Colonial Desire: Hybridity in
Weeks 3–4: First Nations/ Settler Colonialism Theory, Culture and Race (New York: Routledge, 1994), 2–26.
David Gramit, “The Transnational History of Settler Colonialism and the Music Homi Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,”
of the Urban West: Resituating a Local Music History,” American Music 32, The Location of Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2004),
no. 3 (2014): 272–91. 121–31.
Beverley Diamond, “Resisting Containment: The Long Reach of Song at the Amanda Weidman, “Echo and Anthem: Representing Sound, Music, and
Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools,” in Difference in Two Colonial Modern Novels,” in Audible Empire: Music,
Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and beyond the Truth and Global Politics, Critique, eds. Ronald Radano and Tejumola Olaniyan
Reconciliation Commission of Canada, eds. Dylan Robinson and Keavy (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 314–33.
Martin (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016), 239–65.
Dylan Robinson, “Chapter 1: Hungry Listening,” in Hungry Listening: Resonant Week 8: Politics of Resistance and Race
Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Tina Ramnarine, “Orchestral Connections in the Cultures of Decolonization:
Press, 2020), 37–76. Reflections on British, Caribbean and Indian contexts,” in Global
Perspectives on Orchestras: Collective Creativity and Social Agency, ed.
Susan Neylan and Melissa Meyer, “‘HERE COMES THE BAND!’ Cultural
Collaboration, Connective Traditions, and Aboriginal Brass Bands on Tina Ramnarine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 324–350.
British Columbia’s North Coast, 1875–1964,” BC Studies no. 152 (2006): Mina Yang, “East Meets West in the Concert Hall: Asians and Classical Music
35–66. in the Century of Imperialism, Post-colonialism, and Multiculturalism,”
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffith and Helen Tiffin, “Indigeneity,” in The Post- Asian Music 38, no. 1 (2007): 1–30.
Colonial Studies Reader, 2nd ed., eds. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffith and Mhoze Chikowero, “Cultures of Resistance,” in African Music, Power, and
Helen Tiffin (Oxford: Routledge, 2006), 163–64. Being in Colonial Zimbabwe (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
Margery Fee, “Who Can Write as Other?” in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 2015), 239–273.
2nd ed., eds. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffith and Helen Tiffin (Oxford:
Routledge, 2006), 169–71. Weeks 9–10: Education—A Living Force
Alan J. Bishop, “Western Mathematics: The Secret Weapon of Cultural
Terry Goldie, “The Representation of the Indigene,” in The Post-Colonial Studies
Imperialism,” Race and Class 32, No. 2 (1990): 51–65.
Reader, 2nd ed., eds. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffith and Helen Tiffin (Oxford:
Routledge, 2006), 172–75.
82 Journal of Music History Pedagogy
Ubiratan D’Ambrosio, “In My Opinion: What is Ethnomathematics, and How

Can It Help Children in Schools?” Teaching Children Mathematics 7, no. 6
(2001): 308–310.
Anna Bull, “El Sistema as a Bourgeois Social Project: Class, Gender, and
Victorian Values,” Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education 15,
no. 1 (2016): 120–153.
Roe-Min Kok, “Music for a Postcolonial Child: Theorizing Malaysian
Memories,” in Musical Childhoods and the Cultures of Youth, eds. Susan
Boynton and Roe-Min Kok (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press,
2006), 89–104.
Christopher N. Poulos, “Conceptual Foundations of Autoethnography,” in
Essentials of Autoethnography (Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association, 2021), 3–9.
Week 11: Social Inequalities in the Culture Industry

Christina Scharff, “The Silence that is Not a Rest: Negotiating Hierarchies of
Class, Race, and Gender,” in Gender, Subjectivity, and Cultural Work: The
Classical Music Profession (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2018), 85–112.
Anna Bull, “‘Getting It Right’ as an Affect of Self-Improvement,” in Class,
Control and Classical Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019),
70–92.
Anna Bull, “Uncertain Capital: Class, Gender, and the ‘Imagined Futures’ of
Young Classical Musicians,” in The Classical Music Industry, eds. Chris
Dromey and Julia Haferkorn (New York: Routledge, 2017), 79–95.
Catherine Lu, “Responsibility, Structural Injustice, and Structural
Transformation,” Ethics & Global Politics 11, no. 1 (2018): 42–57.
Weeks 12–13: Final presentations

Archives, Objects, and the Global History of Music
Nancy Yunhwa Rao
“The transformation of ‘archivistic’ activity is the point of

departure and the condition for a new history.”
— Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History1
A
rchival studies have been crucial to the production of knowledge in
musicology that focuses on European tradition. Objects are typically
used as evidence to support specific historical narratives, in particular
objects such as documents and musical instruments. In classrooms, instructors
encourage students to connect to music history by thinking through primary
sources such as manuscripts, compositional sketches, personal correspon-
dences, programs, and diaries, as well as musical instruments relevant to the
music they study. Research questions may include: How do compositional
sketches shed light on musical works? How do historical editions reveal their
performing history? How do correspondences reflect relationships, musical
ideas, influences, and inspiration? What do documents about singers and
patrons say about canon building? Music history pedagogues have also incor-
porated organology in classrooms, as significant instrumental collections on
many university campuses and museums offer stupendous opportunities for
students to explore the practice of music-making from different historical peri-
ods, as well as a wide range of geographical locations and cultural traditions.
Both the increased attention given to archival documents and the hands-on
pedagogy in musicology have broadened the scope of learning and deepened
the understanding of music history.
Writing about her experience in such pedagogy, Kristen Strandberg notes,
“Introducing students to tangible historical objects and physical spaces helps
to build an even more direct connection with the past. When students interact
with pieces of history in the form of documents, objects, or historical buildings,
they make a connection to the past that is far more direct than those generated
1. Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, trans. Tom Cloney (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1988), 75.
107
108 Journal of Music History Pedagogy Archives, Objects, and the Global History of Music 109
by classroom discussion alone.”2 Indeed, such studies help students engage at a musical practices outside of the received canons and that are not yet collected
personal level and understand better the role of music-making in relation to the by music archives.
historical context, such as the Civil War period. In addition to the list of questions I mention above, one might also ask:
For global music history pedagogy, the issue of the archive is ever more What constitutes the objects of study? Where do we find the archive of objects
important. The archival activities that form the basis of knowledge production that speak to our inquiry? How do we disentangle the impact of archival hier-
in musicology—which has focused on Anglo-European music traditions—need archy and the ways that the denigration and, at times, criminalization of the
to be broadened and re-conceptualized. As the Mission Statement of the IMS peripheral in archival accounts of the past continue to shape our imagination
Study Group “Global History of Music” notes, we have the aim of “examining today? In this essay, we will begin by considering the knowledge hierarchy and
the global musical repercussions of transcontinental exchanges, movement, silence in archives. I will then discuss my experience teaching a workshop with
and mixing of peoples, practices, ideas, and objects.”3 As researchers of global the Chung Collection at the University of British Columbia, where I focused
musics, we must contend with this uneven playing field, and one way to con- on three key pedagogical points to inspire critical thinking about the objects
tend is to make the problematics of archival work more apparent and palpable. in the archive. In the conclusion, I reflect on the emplacement of the archive
English scholar Matt Cohen asserts that archives are not only “places where in Vancouver and its significance for both the transpacific history of American
knowledge is produced,” but where that knowledge gains stature. Paraphrasing music and the participants of the workshop.
the anthropologist Ann Stoler, he claims that “what gets kept and how it gets
marked as evidence gives form to power, shaping the imagination of those who Archival Hierarchy and Silence
use an archive.”4 The archive, in other words, is not an impartial place. More
often than not researchers are faced with the challenge of a lack of tangible Let us first examine the notion of the archive. Archives contain historical
connections to, and distorted accounts of, marginalized communities in music records or primary source documents that have been accumulated and are kept
archives in the West. to show the activities, functions, or achievements, of persons or organizations.
Documentary heritage, as it turns out, is a privilege that belongs to domi- Collections in the archives are selected (appraised) and organized (catalogued)
nating groups. Rather than being naturally generated as a depository of histor- for preservation, based on their enduring cultural, historical or evidentiary val-
ical materials, archives exert oppressive power to make certain communities ues. Archives are a form of repository of knowledge, and the cataloguing pro-
stay in the periphery. For example, the language barrier when working with cess, as archivist Hannah Grout notes astutely, “creates the narrative and navi-
global archival materials is an inevitable hinderance: most music history gability of the collection.”5 However, as sites of knowledge production, inherent
librarians in North America cannot read non-European languages to facilitate biases and silences are built into archives. Every archive is embedded in systems
archival research beyond Anglo-European research topics. Yet the diversity of of power that determine what counts as knowledge; documents and objects
our student population and the increasing diversification of the subjects of our were collected accordingly. In all likelihood, documents and artifacts from and
study require that we acknowledge the existing archival hierarchy and move about peripheral groups have been traditionally deemed unworthy of collec-
toward redressing it. With increasing efforts in digitization of archival materials tion and few documents would be collected and preserved from the perspective
we may be in a good position to be engaged in primary materials that link to of historically marginalized groups. Even when they are collected, bias in cata-
loging could misrepresent them or render them neglectable or inconsequential
2. Kristen Strandberg, “Music History Beyond the Classroom: Active Learning Through to the dominating historical narrative or knowledge hierarchy. With the goal of
Local History,” this Journal 7, no. 2 (2017): 32. The use of museum objects, in particular the teaching global history of music, it is important to help students understand the
instrument connection, in music education is discussed in Elizabeth A. Clendinning and
archival hierarchy, to help them navigate their way through existing archives,
Andrew W. Gurstelle, “Object Lessons: Teaching Musicology through Museum Collections,”
this Journal 11, no. 1 (2021): 22–45. and to help them consider the construction of their own archives that can
3. “Mission Statement,” IMS Study Group “Global History of Music,” International express the cultural frameworks relevant to their research topics.
Musicological Society, accessed July 3, 2022, https://www.musicology.org/networks/sg/ An opportunity to explore these issues presented itself recently. In Spring
global-history-of-music.
2022, I was invited to give an archival workshop on music history of early
4. Matt Cohen, “Design and Politics in Electronic American Literary Archives,” in The
American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age, eds. Amy E. Earhart and Andrew Jewell (Ann 5. Hannah Grout, “Archiving Critically: Exploring the Communication of Cultural Biases,”
Arbor: University of Michigan, 2011): 231. Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal 4, no. 1 (2019): 73.
Chinese Americans at the University of British Columbia based on my research several libraries at the University of California, Berkeley, and the New York
for the book Chinatown Opera Theater in North America.6 The pedagogical sit- Public Library. Studying these local Chinese-language newspapers from the
uation prompted me to thematize several ideas about archival approaches. I 1910s to 1930s allowed me a window into the community and an opportunity
began with my own story about archives. Growing up in Taiwan, I was trained in to engage with voices and perspectives from within the Chinese community
Western art music and pursued postgraduate degrees in music theory in North that had never been published in scholarly research on music. I also extended
America, with a focus on twentieth-century American music. I used archival my Chinese-language archival search to materials outside of North American,
research in my works on ultra-modern composers, such as Ruth Crawford, to places such as Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong. There I was able to gain
Henry Cowell, and Elliott Carter. When I first became curious about the access to recordings, visual materials, and other documents that were relevant
topic of Chinese American music history twenty-five years ago, I used similar to my inquiry. In other words, I had to reimagine a mega-archive out of many
research skills: I consulted music bibliography and reference books and visited libraries, museums, private collections, and archives for my research.
music archives in major libraries around North America, looking through card I began this workshop by sharing the personal story that demonstrates the
catalogs and finding aids for names of composers, compositions, musicians, archival hierarchy in music studies in North America, and to provide a frame-
and performing groups. Yet, it was a futile attempt and the project stalled. The work in the hope of, to quote anthropologist Ann Stoler, cutting “across the
music archives I was accustomed to using did not have the materials I needed. strictures of archival production” and refiguring “what makes up the archival
The implication of a vacuum of archival evidence is that the history simply does terrain.”7 My goal was to open workshop participants up to a broad array of
not exist. genres of historical documents and artifacts, to allow them to make connec-
However, by broadening my idea of the music archive and with the use of my tions to musical practices outside of the received canons, and to expand their
Chinese-reading language skills, I was able to redress the knowledge hierarchy imaginations to recall memories and images that have not been considered
in music archival collections. First, following my interest in Chinese American historical evidence.
history, I was led to a treasure trove of materials in the Chinese Exclusion File
at the U.S. National Archives in Washington DC. Due to the Chinese Exclusion The Chung Collection
laws of 1882 that restricted the entry of people from China, and the resulting
need for immigration control, the U.S. government has complete records of The workshop was held at the Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung
all the Chinatown theaters and the entry and departure of every opera per- Collection at the University of British Columbia Library, merely a five-min-
former, playwright, musician, and other multi-faceted opera personnel. They ute walk from its School of Music. As noted on the university website for the
were responsible for creating and maintaining vibrant opera performances Chung collection, it is a 25,000+ piece collection of documents, books, maps,
across America in the 1920s. In other words, performing arts libraries and posters, paintings, photographs, tableware, and other artifacts related to three
archives that gathered the documents of composers, concert houses, musical broad themes: British Columbia history, immigration and settlement, and
institutions, ensembles, and organizations did not deem the music of Chinese the Canadian Pacific Railway company (CPR). It has a significant amount of
immigrants worthy of collection. Yet, since they were unwelcome immigrants, materials related to the immigration and settlement of Chinese people in North
their records were meticulously kept by the U.S. Department of Labor for gov- America. Growing up as a tailor’s son in Victoria, B.C., Wallace Chung began
ernment surveillance. collecting when he was seven. As a highly respected surgeon, Wallace Chung
Second, I began looking for archives with Chinese language materials, was just as assiduous as an expert collector. He was joined in Victoria by his
such as historical Chinese-language newspapers published in the United wife Madeline, an obstetrician who emigrated from Hong Kong in the 1940s.8
States. I found them housed in several university and public libraries, such as Importantly, the Chung Collection acquired the family and business
6. I am grateful to Hedy Sin Yan Law for the invitation and for organizing the three-event papers of Yip Sang (1845–1927), a prominent Canadian pioneer. His company
keynote series, sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Histories Research Cluster at the University Wing Sang not only owned fishing boats, fish salteries, and canning plants;
of British Columbia, March 17–19, 2022. The first two events both focused on archives: keynote
lecture, “Archive of the Invisible in American Music: Tracing Transpacific Crossing of Chinese 7. Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common
Opera”; workshop, “Reading Archive—Against the Grain.” The keynotes series was an exten- Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 34.
sion to my book. See Nancy Yunhwa Rao, Chinatown Opera Theater in North America (Urbana, 8. “The Chung Collection,” Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British
IL: University of Illinois, 2017). Columbia, accessed March 18, 2023, https://chung.library.ubc.ca/.
established import/export trade; and served as the Chinese Immigration agent pedagogical points to inspire critical thinking about the objects, as well as
in Vancouver, but was also the shipping agent for the CPR and partnered with encourage creative, resourceful, and imaginative consideration of the objects.
Chinatown businesses from tailors to restaurants. The total impact of Yip’s life
on the social, cultural, economic, and political fabric of Canada and China is (1) Make connections among seemingly unrelated materials
immeasurable, as his great granddaughter Linda Yip notes.9 Little do people The textual documents bear witness to the history of Chinatown theaters
know, however, that the Yip family ran Chinese opera theater business over in the early twentieth century by providing the names of theater professionals,
a long period of time.10 In this massive collection of rare, unique archival the titles of operas, and the travels of troupes. For example, theater playbills
materials of early B.C. history—which was by no means limited to Chinese contain information about the cast, the repertoire performed, the date of the
Canadian history—one can find Chinese playbills, photographs of actors, stage performance, a synopsis, and sometimes advertisements for local businesses or
productions, correspondence related to theater management, and numerous medicines. From a close study of them we learn the actors’ names, roles, popu-
other items. lar topics, performance practices, and many other aspects of the theater world.
Having worked with the collection for my book, I know the sheer number However, as promotion materials, the playbills’ content cannot be taken at face
of materials in, and the complexity of, the Chung Collection, which could be value; we must read them within a broader context.12 Performers’ names in
quite overwhelming. Working with the archivist, I selected both Chinese and the theater company correspondence can provide details about their expertise
English items in advance from both the business and family parts of the col- and characteristics. This correspondence also gives insight into the logistics of
lection.11 They were laid out on four large tables in the reading room, with easy theater management and the perspectives of the managerial team. From the
access to an object for everyone when they sat around the table. The objects community donation book for schools in China, we can find traces of the social
included maps, a community donation book (listing individual donations to standing and influence of theater sponsors and personnel. This information
benefit a school in southern China), theater playbills, theater company business further helps us understand the roles of theaters in the community. By piec-
records and correspondences, logs of passenger lists from a steamship company, ing together fragmented information from a variety of sources and connecting
personal correspondences, studio portraits of actors in costume, stage photos, seemingly disparate dots, a rough sketch of the web of connections and daily
telegrams, and more. Twenty students and faculty registered for the workshop. life surrounding these theaters can emerge. This is by no means a small feat. Yu
As we waited for people to arrive, they moved around the tables, reviewing the Ying-shih, the eminent historian of Chinese intellectual history, noted in his
documents and artifacts. memoir that pondering the connections between seemingly unrelated materi-
als constitutes one of the most important tasks for historians.13
Three Pedagogical Points After the brief introduction of the artifacts and possibilities of connections,
workshop participants examined more closely the artifacts and documents dis-
One of the goals of the workshop was to introduce to the participants to played. When they flipped through the pages of the donation book, they could
the richness of materials related to music making of Chinese immigrants in see the wide range of donation amounts (from CAD$1 to 1,000) and how the-
the Chung Collection. But even more importantly, it focused on several key ater personnel and sponsors were placed within the economic and social strata
of the Chinese community. When they looked through the long lists of passen-
9. Linda Yip, “Yip Sang, the Patriarch—Reflections on a True Canadian Pioneer,” blog
entry, June 26, 2020, https://blogs.ancestry.ca/ancestry/2020/06/26/yip-sang-the-patriarch-re ger names meticulously written out in both Chinese and English in the log of
flections-on-a-true-canadian-pioneer/. records of steamship ticket sales, they could probably imagine Chinese opera
10. Nancy Yunhwa Rao, “Cantonese Opera in Turn-of-the Century Canada: Local History performers among them. When they examined a playbill (Figure 1 and Figure
and Transnational Circulation,” 19th Century Music Review 11, no. 2 (2014): 291–310.
11. Special thanks to Chelsea Shriver and Weiyan V. Yan at UBC’s Rare Books and Special 12. In my book, I discuss the interpretation of Chinese theater playbills from the early
Collections for their expert and prompt help. The Chung Collection includes both Chinese and twentieth century. While it may be tempting to view the playbills as concrete evidence of the
English materials. I discussed extensively the Yip Sang family materials in the Chung Collection. performance, I suggest that a more fruitful approach is to consider them as footprints of the
A significant amount of the Yip Sang materials is digitized, and even translated. “The Yip Sang theaters. During this time period, performance practices were often fluid and improvisational,
Correspondence Project,” Sue Bigelow, The City of Vancouver Archives Blog, April 17, 2014, making it difficult to view the playbills as a blueprint for the actual performance. See Rao,
https://www.vancouverarchives.ca/2014/04/17/the-yip-sang-correspondence-project/, and the Chinatown Opera Theater, 103.
“Yip Sang Collection,” The University of British Columbia, Open Collections, accessed July 3, 13. Yu Ying-shi, Yu Yingshi hui yi lu 余英時回憶錄 (Taibei Shi: Yun chen wen hua shi ye
2022, https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/yipsang. gu fen you xian gong si, 2018).
2), they could see the repertoire, cast list, and ticket prices, as well as highlights (2) Examine the materiality of the object
of the main attraction, praise of the lead performers, and highlights of the plot It was important for the workshop participants to experience first-hand the
to pique the audiences’ curiosity. These documents offer a vivid sense of busy materiality of the objects (e.g., the size of the playbills, the colorations of the
transpacific movement in the early twentieth century that supported the trans- photographs, and the different techniques the photograph studios employed
pacific music network of North America, which included Vancouver. In a vast to mount photos onto paper). These might seem to be minute details, but
archive such as the Chung Collection, a plentitude of connections could be they could be significant and telling. To this end, I urged the participants to
made to inform the history of their vibrant musical life. consider the content of the archival document and its materiality separately.
Such separation, I suggested, could lead to information about the object easily
overlooked when we are engrossed by text and content. For example, all of the
playbills were printed on newsprint paper, because, owing to the large number
of characters needed to print Chinese and the complexity of typesetting, only
theaters in cities with an adequate printing facility—typically a newspaper—
could have their daily playbills professionally printed. Playbill printing was thus
an extension of the Chinese newspaper business. Therefore, as objects, playbills
helped us to make a connection between the history of Chinatown theater,
print culture, and the social history of Chinatown journalism.
The photograph is another example. The durability of the cardboard papers
that the portraits of actors were mounted to not only ensured the longevity
Fig. 1. A workshop participant consulting a playbill at the UBC Rare Books and
of the photograph but also indicated the popularity of photography in the
Special Collections. (Photograph by Sonia Kung.)
Chinese community and the success of Chinese professional photography stu-
dios. Indeed, the popularity of photographs of theater performers can be shown
in the elaborate ways that they were encased or mounted by the photography
studios.
(3) Consider the Usage of the Object

Most importantly, however, I want the participants to consider how the
objects were utilized by ordinary people of their time. What kind of “usage”
might these artifacts have for people in the community? How, for example,
might the playbill be used by opera fans? I received quite a number of answers.
At first, most answers referenced information conveyed by the text on the play-
bills. Then a few volunteered answers about other possible uses of playbills that
led to the key issue: their role in material consumption and exchange.
These archived objects were not simply historical props and parapherna-
lia, but how they were exchanged and used was extremely revealing. As Arjun
Appadurai notes, “it is the things-in-motion that illuminate their human and
social context… for their meanings are inscribed in their forms, their uses,
their trajectories.”14 Indeed, objects are essential to disclosing how theatrical
culture was created, shaped, and disseminated. In other words, the relationship
Fig. 2. The playbill consulted by the workshop participant in Fig.1. Reproduced by
14. Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” in The
permission from the UBC Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection, Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge:
cc-tx-123-5-國豐年班十月三十號. Cambridge University Press, 1986), 5.
between opera theaters and people was formed and mediated by these objects in Separating the content of an archival document from its materiality and
the most fundamental ways. In the hands of fans, objects such as playbills could the usage of the object is a key archival skill that would benefit students of
be artifacts stashed away in private treasure troves. Fans cropped out pictures of global music history. This skill is crucial to the development of the frameworks
actresses from the playbills and pasted them into scrapbooks, and these visual and narratives of networks of cross-cultural relationships, addressing how
images of their idols influenced their own identity formation. Considering the musics have moved across different continents, intersected cross-culturally,
materiality of these objects is necessary to unseal the specific meanings embed- and become entangled with each other. These archival skills are also crucial for
ded within them. Not only were significant meanings inscribed in their usage, the imagination of an archive that does not, and cannot, exist in one location.
but these meanings came to shape the community’s everyday life. Exploring The musical past unveiled by these archival objects in the Chung Collection
these objects as material culture and considering their usage leads us to a wide is part of the Pacific-crossing story of Vancouver. These documents preserved in
range of questions concerning social networks, human transactions, economic the Chung Collection offered the participants a vivid sense of busy transpacific
conditions, and human agencies. movements in the early twentieth century that supported the transpacific music
Our exploration into their materiality can also contextualize these objects network of North America. In a profound way, these transpacific movements
more fully as well. The social fabrics of Chinese community existed in the form came to be essential constituents of the musical past of a significant group of
of material culture through these objects. Exploring the material dimensions people in Vancouver that the workshop participants were either a part of, inter-
of historical artifacts can therefore transform our understanding of them and acted with on a daily basis, or newly joined. Indeed, many participants partook
inspire a rethinking or reconceptualization of conventional knowledge about in the transpacific movement themselves. According to the 2016 census, about
Chinatown theaters in North America. 20% of Vancouver’s population now identifies as ethnic Chinese, and 42% as
Displayed on the tables, the objects and documents at first seemed cordoned ethnic Asian.16 This makes the archive workshop at the Chung Collection all
off in their own objecthood. Yet with further discussion of how there existed the more meaningful. I can imagine workshops like this one could benefit not
an active and mutual contact between these things and people, we came to see only music students but students in other disciplines, such as global history,
them differently. When participants again milled around the room and asked migration studies, urban history, Asian studies, ethnic studies, as well as to
questions, they began to think about the ways these objects might have been those interested in public musicology.
used during their life history. Questions about the materiality of the objects In my own work, as a former student of American ultra-modernism, I
uncovered more layers of meaning regarding the ways that people inscribed found that it was apparent that the traditional music archive did not suffice
meaning onto them and embedded them with significance that circulated and when I embarked on the search for Chinese American music. In the end, I
interacted with larger cultural and social concerns. created a different kind of archive of my own that helped lead me to uncover
the transpacific circulation of Cantonese opera in the 1920s. One of the aims
Conclusion for this workshop was to share the knowledge I had acquired and to help the
participants realize the different ways they can create their own archive for the
To be sure, archives, and the objects collected within them, shape our imag- study of a global history of music.
ination of musical history. For a pedagogy of global music history, then, this
is an important conversation to have. As Michel de Certeau notes poignantly,
“The transformation of ‘archivistic’ activity is the point of departure and the
condition for a new history.”15 One of the most important tasks might be to
reconfigure what constitutes archivistic activities and to reimagine and recreate
new ones. To this end, understanding the problem of archival hierarchy, con-
sidering issues of archive, and learning different modes of reading its objects
can be vital lessons for students of global music history.
16. “Data Products, 2016 Census,” Statistics Canada, updated February 8, 2021, https://
15. de Certeau, The Writing of History, 75. [Emphasis mine.] www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/index-eng.cfm.
Why I Don’t Teach Global Music History 119
ethnographic research.2 My mother converted to Orthodox Judaism when she

met my father and we were raised Jewish, with no knowledge of Catholicism and
Why I Don’t Teach Global Music History little of our Catholic, Irish, English, and Scottish heritage. My parents moved
to Montréal, Québec in the late 1950s: I was educated in French immersion
schools with humanities classes in French and sciences in English. Growing
Tamara Levitz up, I was accustomed to hearing that I was “not really Jewish” because my
mother had converted; today the Montréal Jewish community’s rigidity around
enforcing rules of Jewish descent through the matrilineal line appears to have
softened. As a native English speaker I was acutely aware of being neither
Québecois nor belonging in the province of Québec during these years of hyper
Position Statement1 French nationalism although I was born there. On the other hand, my Québec
roots lead me to relate only vaguely to the idea of being a Canadian although I
I
am a 61-year-old, privileged, white Jewish woman who has been teaching identify as such when outside Canada. At school, we were educated to admire
as a musicologist for 30 years, finding a home in the past five years as a emphatically everything French. I did not grow up with classical music and
full professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at UCLA. I have no allegiance to it or any other musical genre.
am from Tiohtià:ke/Montréal on the unceded territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka/ My father was a doctor and my mother a nurse. My siblings and I were
Mohawk nation, today in Québec, Canada. My family on my mother’s side raised at first by a black nanny from the Bahamas, Daphne Yarward, who came
were descended from Irish, English, and Scottish Catholic, Protestant, and to Canada as part of the West Indian Domestic Scheme; I struggle as an adult
Methodist settlers and planters on the island of Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland) as to reconcile the feeling of love I have for her with feelings of shame at my impli-
the unceded, traditional territory of the Beothuk and the Mi’kmaq. The British cation in the unjust and inequitable system that brought her into my life. My
established the Dominion of Newfoundland in 1907 but the island gave up family was middle class aspiring to be upper middle class with an inherited
self-governance and put itself under a Commission of Government from 1934 memory of hardship. Perhaps I could say we had the material advantages and
to 1949, when it joined Canada as a province. My mother was raised Catholic privilege of the middle class accompanied with the fear of losing them, espe-
in the fishing output of Red Head Cove, Newfoundland during these years. Her cially when my father died in 1977.
father was a fisherman from a long line of skilled fishermen in the Baccalieu I moved to West Berlin on a DAAD scholarship in 1984 at age 22 to study
strait who experienced the decline of the fishing industry during his lifetime. Musicology—a very rare choice for a Jewish Montréaler at that time in light
My father’s family were orthodox Jews who came to St. John’s Newfoundland to of the unhealed wounds of the Holocaust, which was still in recent memory.
escape the pogroms in Krivici and Smorgon (Smarhon) in the pale settlement There I experienced the worst anti-Semitism I had known up to that point in
(today Belarus) in the early 1920s; my grandfather was a peddler who later my life. Before I left, my mother told me for the first time that I was named
set up a clothing store in St. John’s. My Jewish family has been the subject of after my great aunt Tamara Muzykant, who was murdered in the Holocaust,
possibly in a mass grave in Rostov-on-Don, but I have never found her. I went
to Germany with the hope of finding out why the Nazis had killed her and my
grandmother’s family. I discovered that in spite of the zeal with which I pursued
1. I provide this statement because the editors of this issue, Hedy Law, Daniel Castro such questions, I could not answer them, because the Nazis’ motivations had
Pantoja, and Hannah HK Chang requested it. I am grateful to them for this suggestion, through been fundamentally irrational, grounded in destructive hate, and thus beyond
which I learned a tremendous amount, also about how the grandchildren of Holocaust survi-
vors might situate themselves in the world. At the same time, I am acutely aware of the limits, my reasoning. At the same time, however, I could not identify with the way
problems, and challenges of such introductions. I have found much food for thought in this Jewish Montréalers at home tended to demonize Germans or boycott Germany.
regard in Jessica Bissett Perea’s “Introducing [Our] Peoples, Places, and Projects: Indigelogical In Berlin I developed a conviction to seek the truth, dialogue, and commit to
Ways of Doing Global Music History Homework,” in “Forum: Centering Discomfort in Global
Music History,” The Journal of Musicology 40, no. 3 (Summer 2023): 255-267. 2. See, for example, Alison Kahn, Listen While I Tell You. A Story of the Jews of St-John’s,
Newfoundland (St-Jean, TN: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University
118 of Newfoundland, 1987).
120 Journal of Music History Pedagogy Why I Don’t Teach Global Music History 121
social and restorative justice, even if I was for so many years very naïve about Conceiving the World
how to go about doing so. One consequence of these ruminations is that I have
remained profoundly tied to Berlin and the German language for forty years; Musicology lacks a robust debate on the meaning of terms such as “global”
I am married to somebody from East Germany (the DDR) and my family and and “world.” This is rather remarkable and unfortunate, given the rich, long-
grand-children are German. standing critical engagements with these terms in other fields.4 Comparativists
This history explains why I do not have a strong sense of one homeland or a in literature have been theorizing literature’s place in the world ever since Johann
single form of belonging although I understand the immense advantages of my Wolfgang von Goethe first used the term “world literature” (Weltliteratur) in
citizenship, settler family history, and generational wealth. It also explains why conversations with his unpaid secretary Johann Peter Eckermann in the years
I am deeply committed to taking responsibility for my overwhelming white before his death in 1832. When Goethe told Eckermann in 1827 that he had
privilege, while also not always identifying with how white racial identity is read the Cantonese narrative poem Huajian ji (The Flowery Scroll) from the
formed in the United States. Ming dynasty, translated in 1824 by Peter Perring Thoms as Chinese Courtship,
In the following essay I question global music history as a historiographic Eckermann remarked that it must “look very strange,” to which Goethe
method, without, however, wanting to critique the excellent scholarship pro- responded, “Not as much as one would think. People think, act and feel almost
duced by its widely diverse individual practitioners. Global music history as a exactly like we do and one quickly feels like one of them.”5 Such apocryphal sto-
decentering perspective has brought together many scholars, inspired dialogue, ries laid the foundation for almost two centuries of debate about literary world
improved morale, allowed Musicology to become more inclusive, and led to markets, the geopolitics of world literary relations, cultural empathy, literary
many fascinating articles, conversations, panels, and conferences. This is no comparison, the politics and practices of translation, and universal ideals of
easy feat. In spite of this, I myself cannot teach global music history because I humanity manifested through literature.
don’t find it sound as a heuristic, concept, method, or pedagogical approach. In Recently, Pheng Cheah offered an illuminating analysis of Goethean world
order to demonstrate what I find problematic about it I first ask what the term literature and how it differs from what he calls “global literature.” In his view,
itself means. I start with Pheng Cheah’s critique of world literature, which I the normative [Goethean] conception of world literature subscribes to a spir-
think reveals much about what is at stake in thinking about the global. I then itual idea of universal humanity and treats literature as a privileged form for
compare how musicologists and literary comparativists have historically the- expressing the human spirit. It posits world literature as the “concrete, objec-
orized the world in their respective disciplines—highlighting which methods tive” field for actualizing humanity because it elaborates on the human ideal
each discipline embraced, and which adjustments they had to make in how they through exchange that crosses national boundaries, and it defines world lit-
defined their objects of study to allow them to circulate in the world. Finally, erature as a form of cosmopolitanism because it undermines parochialism at
I hone in on ideological features of the current global music history debate the subjective level of consciousness. Finally, it is founded on the idea that the
that I find disconcerting. I conclude with ideas about what I see as alternative project of world literature and its end of revealing humanity can be achieved
pedagogical approaches to that of “global music history” and how I have and only through historical process. Cheah concludes that, “the normative con-
might implement them in my recent classes. ception of world literature thus posits a relationship between world, literature,
In writing this essay, I am aware of offering precisely the kind of anxious and humanity in which global literary exchange discloses a higher spiritual
criticism that Daniel K.L. Chua argues we no longer need.3 I hope, nevertheless, world wherein humanity’s timeless ideals are expressed in sensuous form.” That
that the counterpoint between my voice from the past and Chua’s voice from conception “defines worldliness as spiritual human intercourse and regards
the future is helpful to others seeking ways to break down traditional national
or “area studies” frameworks in teaching music. 4. Makoto Takao does a phenomenal job of situating global music history within cur-
rent debates on global history, and demonstrating their relative lack of theorization in “Global
Music History,” Oxford Bibliographies Online, Music, last modified August 23, 2022, https://
www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199757824/obo-9780199757824-
0317.xml.
3. See Danial KL Chua, “A Keynote without a Key,” Acta Musicologica 94, no. 1 (2022): 110. 5. Johann Peter Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens,
Chua gives a fascinating list of his work in this area under the asterisk comment on the first eds. Christoph Michel and Hans Grüters (Berlin: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2011), January
page of this article (p. 109). See also his “Global Musicology,” New Sound International Journal 31, 1827. See Leslie O’Bell, “Chinese Novels, Scholarly Errors and Goethe’s Concept of World
of Music 50, no. 2 (2017): 12–16. Literature,” Publications of the English Goethe Society 87, no. 2 (2018): 64–80.
commercial exchange as the paradigm of human relations.” Cheah will use this and sound studies.10 Rather than strive for conceptual coherence, editors of
analysis as the point of departure for an approach to Comparative Literature collections on global music history likewise tend to fall back on “case studies”
based on a temporal rather than spatial concept of the world, and with the goal that address national or ethnic music in an inchoate global space, producing
of transforming the world made by the globalization of capital.6 fragmented atlases of compelling research. Frequently, what global music his-
Cheah critiques recent theories of world literature (including those of David torians call “global” more resembles the antiquated idea of the international,
Damrosch, Franco Moretti, and Pascale Casanova) for detaching the concept or reduces to “connections.”11 Two truly outstanding thinkers—Olivia Bloechl
from its original normative context and reducing it to the idea of “the global and Daniel K.L. Chua—end their essays on global music history with appeals
circulation and production of literary works.”7 In what he calls a “banalization” to institutional reorganization or affective solidarity: Bloechl expresses excite-
of world literature, the concept of the world is left unexamined and world litera- ment about interdisciplinary literature, learning languages, collaborations,
ture is treated as if it has come into being. He laments how theorists presuppose and “interconnection across borders.”12 Chua imagines a “platform” or “soci-
a late eighteenth-century/early nineteenth-century world “emptied of norma- ety” for studying music that encompasses the entire globe—an International
tive significance.” As a consequence, they are left “tinkering” with the canon, Musicological Society (of which he was President) on steroids. In his utopian,
and seeking maximum inclusiveness in a world reduced to “the largest possible somewhat ecstatic, yet also appealing vision—which echoes affectively the
spatial whole.” The “world-making power that normative theories attribute to future-oriented dreams of the Jugendstil or succession movements around
world literature as a means for actualizing humanity and humanizing the exist- 1900—musicologists will be generous to each other, guided by love in uncritical
ing world is lost.” “In short,” he concludes, “recent theories of world literature relation globally.13
have emptied Goethe’s and Marx’s thought of their normative dimension and All of this is very optimistic. But it leaves global music history without a
reduced the world to the globe, an object made by globalization. Hence they are viable theoretical framework or concept of the world.14
concerned not with world literature but with global literature.”8
Cheah’s critique holds, in my view, for global music history, whose prac- Finding Methods and Objects of Study
titioners tend to adopt what he speaks of as “an unexamined concept of the
world as a container to be populated by, or filled with, literary [and musical] Without a concept of the world, it is a challenge for global music historians
works.”9 Lacking a concept of the world, they appeal to models that suggest one to formulate methods and define their object of study, both of which depend
but without connecting the dots, like putting together puzzle pieces that belong on having such a concept. Centuries of disciplinary and methodological sec-
to different puzzles. In the introduction to a foundational collection of essays tarianism have left music studies ill-equipped to rise to this task. Musicologists
on global music history produced as part of the Bolzano project, Martin Stokes are also at a disadvantage for having no historical foundation for developing a
runs through a list of somewhat unrelated theoretical frameworks that imply a comparative method—a requirement, I think, for engaging with music in the
notion of the world—postcolonialism, globalization, world music of the 1980s,
6. Pheng Cheah, “Global Literature, World Literature and Worlding Literature: Some 10. Martin Stokes, “Notes and Queries on ‘Global Music History’,” in Studies on a Global
Conceptual Differences,” in Handbook of Anglophone World Literatures, eds. Stefan Helgesson, History of Music: A Balzan Musicology Project, ed. Reinhold Strohm (London: Routledge,
Birgit Neumann, Gabriele Rippl (Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2020), 86–87. See also Pheng 2018), 3–17.
Cheah, What Is a World?: On Postcolonial Literature as World Literature (Durham: Duke 11. Stephen Scheuzger offers an excellent critique of these approaches in “Global History
University Press, 2016). as Polycentric History,” Comparativ: Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende
7. David Damrosch has published a very wide array of books and articles on world liter- Gesellschaftsforschung 29 (2019), 122–52.
ature, and is the director of the Institute for World Literature at Harvard. From his vast oeu- 12. See Olivia Bloechl, “Editorial,” Eighteenth-Century Music 17, no. 2 (2020): 176.
vre, see, for example, What Is World Literature? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 13. See Danial KL Chua, “A Keynote without a Key,” 111; 122–23.
2003) and Comparing the Literatures: Literary Studies in a Global Age (Princeton NJ: Princeton 14. In this regard, Makoto Takao wisely describes global music history as not being a clear
University Press, 2020). See also Francis Moretti’s “Conjectures on World Literature,” New signifier and having a “polysemous identity.” See Makoto Takao, “Global Music History.” A
Left Review 1 (January 1, 2000): 54–68; and his Distant Reading (New York: Verso, 2013); and concept of the world, or material foundation for examining the global, is also missing in the
Pascale Casanova, La République mondiale des lettres (Paris: Seuil, 1999), translated by M.B. recent forum on discomfort in global music history in the Journal of Musicology, which focuses
DeBevoise as The World Republic of Letters (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). on affective responses to moments of “interconnection across boundaries,” or “entanglement,”
8. Cheah, “Global Literature, World Literature and Worlding Literature: Some Conceptual in Olivia Bloechl’s terms. See, for example, Olivia Bloechl, “Introduction: The Discomforts of
Differences,” 89. Entanglement in Global Music History,” in “Forum: Centering Discomfort in Global Music
9. Cheah, 85. History,” 251-55.
world. Finally, whereas comparativists in literature long ago reached consensus mentioned Baldensperger’s critique of “tracing the history of literary themes”
on their object of study—literature—musicologists still don’t agree on theirs. but curiously omitted the source to which they are traced: the folk. That erasure
By briefly comparing how comparativists in literature and musicologists devel- allowed him to make a fresh start, setting up his own holistic approach to theory,
oped their methodologies and came to define their objects of study historically, criticism, and the judgement of value of literature as an aesthetic object against
I hope to give insight into why musicologists cannot jump so easily onto the Baldensperger’s and other predecessors’ allegedly nationalistic, positivist search
world stage. for sources and influences.18 In a standard text co-written with Austin Warren,
Comparative Literature as a Westernized discipline is grounded in compar- Wellek had earlier tried to define literature as a specific kind of aesthetic object
ative methodologies and in what has become in the present day a remarkably requiring unique types of knowledge.19 In this way he had successively sepa-
solid object of study: literature. This stability can be maintained only because rated literature, and Comparative Literature from the folk (and the plurality of
of the hermetic elitism of Comparative Literature’s worldwide readership, temporalities that Cheah sees as crucial to fighting the globalization of capital).
which the discipline achieved historically in a long intricate process and in The ensuing dispute between French and US comparativists over “imagologie”
part by making a clean break with comparative philology and folklore studies. and the historic study of transnational influences in literature further diverted
Although contributors to the first journal of Comparative Literature—the poly- the discipline from folk study, in my view.20 Contemporary comparativists avoid
glot Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum—engaged in the comparative all this messy history by skipping over it, convincing themselves their discipline
study of and translation of folk poetry, by the time the first German journal in originated with Goethe’s Weltliteratur but then leapt somewhat miraculously
the discipline appeared in 1897, its editor, Max Koch, had started to see such from Goethe to Auerbach’s exile in Turkey, Edward Said, and the invention of a
studies as a premise for something bigger, Herder’s work having led him to the postwar discipline that tolerates folklore studies as an unobtrusive cousin and
idea of shared humanity as the basis for world literature.15 Accordingly, Koch distant memory, and reinvents philology as a concept within worldly criticism.21
separated out the science of folklore in his mapping of the discipline.16 In his By containing their domain and object of study, they have been able to avoid
programmatic introduction to the journal La Littérature comparée a couple of thinking about their settler colonial history, and to keep their distance from
decades later, Fernand Baldensperger critiqued both the scholarly tradition of decolonization efforts, some of them believing that their discipline achieved
seeking the origin of genres or literary themes in the folk—a method he called plurality and inclusion long before anyone else did.22
“literary Darwinism”—and the practice of comparing national literatures.
18. René Wellek, “The Crisis of Comparative Literature,” in Proceedings of the Second
Although these branches had formed a “brotherly alliance” at the Congrès
International Congress of Comparative Literature, ed. Werner P. Friederich (Chapel Hill:
d’histoire comparée des littératures held at the Universal Exposition in Paris University of North Carolina University Press, 1959), 148–59; reprinted in The Princeton
in 1900, Baldensperger had come to doubt them, the turn towards individual Sourcebook in Comparative Literature: From the Global Enlightenment to the Present, eds. David
expression having convinced him that a Bergsonian exploration of the dyna- Damrosch, Natalie Melas, and Mbongiseni Buthelezi (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
161–72. See p. 165 for his discussion of Baldensperger.
mism of literary ideas as they develop, become, and move around the globe
19. René Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature [1942], 3rd edition (New York:
would set a better foundation for the “new humanism” of the modern age.17 Harcourt, Brace & World, 1956). René Wellek wrote the first two chapters, on the nature of lit-
The fate of folklore and nineteenth-century philology within the discipline erature (pp. 15–28). Although it is not popular to read Wellek today, it is remarkably refreshing
of Comparative Literature was sealed in the United States with the rise of New to do so.
20. See Sarah Lawall, “René Wellek and Modern Literary Criticism,” Comparative
Criticism in the 1950s. In a canonic article on “The Crisis of Comparative
Literature 40, no.1 (Winter 1988), 3–24; and Antoni Martí Monterde, “Jean-Marie Carré et les
Literature” that shook the discipline, René Wellek convincingly rejected origines historiques et politiques de l’imagologie comparatiste,” Revue de littérature comparée
the French school and Baldensperger, whose proposed method he reduced 379, no. 3 (2021): 297–312.
to a search for “minor authors and bygone fashions of literary taste.” Wellek 21. This happened famously with Edward Said’s worldliness as developed from Erich
Auerbach’s “Philology and Weltliteratur,” translated by Maire and Edward Said, The Centennial
15. Összehasonlító Irodalomtörténelmi Lapok/Acta Comparationis Litterarum Review 13, no. 1 (Winter 1969): 1–17.
Universarum, eds .Sámuel Brassai and Hugo von Meltzl (Kolozsvár/Klausenburg/Cluj, 1877– 22. That said, I was very taken by the many papers on decolonization at the 2022 annual
88), accessed September 25, 2023, http://dspace.bcucluj.ro/handle/123456789/11579. conference of the American Comparative Literature Association. See, for example, Shu-mei
16. Max Koch, “Zur Einführung,” Zeitschrift für vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte 1 (1897): Shih, “Decolonizing US Comparative Literature: The 2022 ACLA Presidential Address,”
11–12. Comparative Literature 75, no. 3 (1 September 2023): 237–265; and, in the same volume, Alice
17. Fernand Baldensperger, “Littérature comparée: Le mot et la chose,” Revue de littérature Te Punga Somerville; “‘Enter Ghost of Goethe’: Comparison and Indigenous Literary Studies
comparée 1 (1921): 5–29. in the Pacific,” 266–282.
Musicology’s attempts at erasing folklore from its past and subsuming its than they were—Darwin’s work having cast long dark shadows on their per-
shared humanity into a worldly project of comparative music criticism have spectives and having fueled the evolutionary theories that became their bread
not been remotely as successful. This is in part because of the ontological differ- and butter. Working in a discipline born at the height of empire, comparative
ences between literature and music: as a non-representational art that cannot musicologists replaced comparative literature’s Goethean idealism of another
be so neatly divided into oral and written traditions, the latter can be neither age with a positivist project of imperial data collecting: they made charts, col-
translated nor compared in terms of content as, let’s say, novels can be, and thus lected instruments, established recording archives, and worked assiduously to
lends itself poorly to the task of revealing humanity in all its difference in the expand the knowledge base of music in the Westernized academy.
world. Whereas some experience music as notated or recorded, sound or work, The methods comparative musicologists developed in the early twentieth
others do not, the range of possible experiences preventing musicologists on century seem to cause the most anguish for global music historians trying
the whole from developing one object of study for their discipline. In contrast to regroup and redefine their discipline today. Hornbostel and his colleagues
to literary comparativists, musicologists also cannot depend on an enduring relied on Comparative Linguistics in developing “scientific methods” of empir-
creation myth as generative as that of Eckermann’s fortuitous capturing of ically comparing music on the basis of what they saw as objective data such as
Goethe’s genial insight on Weltliteratur. recordings and music instruments. They used precise instruments for measur-
The greatest obstacle to Westernized musicologists being able to theorize ing pitch and intervals (following the standard set by Alexander J. Ellis), and
music in the world and define their objects of study, however, is the burden they drew on the tools of music theory to compare consonances, dissonances, rhyth-
carry of the legacy of their own discipline. When Guido Adler first mapped mic language, harmony (largely absent in non-European music, in their view),
the new discipline of the “science of music” (Musikwissenschaft) in 1885, as is and motives, completing exhaustive reports that few people then or now have
well known, he distinguished between its historical and systematic branches, cared to read. Although it may be tempting to see music theory and acoustics as
with Western music as the subject matter of history, and non-Western music an “equivalent” of sorts to philology in literature, they were not: it is noteworthy
relegated to the bottom of the list of subcategories of Systematic Musicology in this regard that the comparative musicologists chose comparative linguistics
as “Comparative Musicology” or Ethnography. Adler’s dichotomic model has and not comparative literature as their model. The act of gathering data and
proven a curse to all those who inherited it. He not only robbed non-Western establishing archives appears sometimes more important to comparative musi-
music of historical method, but also Western music of a comparative meth- cologists than the research outcomes—a hollowness of purpose characteristic
od—a bifurcation of musical thought that has ripped apart the Westernized of academic disciplines grounded in empire. Comparative musicologists also
music disciplines.23 performed psychological experiments, conducted ethnographic research, took
When Adler’s friend Erich von Hornbostel, a trained chemist, more explic- anthropometric measurements of musicians’ skulls, and launched sociological
itly defined the field of Comparative Musicology in 1905, he focused on col- investigations—the focus on quantitative data limiting the critical potential of
lecting and comparing as many recordings of the world’s peoples that he could these investigations. Such experiments continue today, yet continue to make
find with the goal of determining “the origins and development of music and people nervous because of the universal qualities or values they presume and/
the essence of the musically beautiful.”24 The problematic search for origins or the difference they potentially mask or erase.
that literary comparativists saw as part of their discipline and then quietly let The science of Comparative Musicology came to North America when
disappear, became the raison d’être of this new discipline. Further, whereas the Hornbostel’s assistant in the Phonogramm-Archiv—Hungarian-Jewish former
literary comparativists’ Goethean norm of world literature posited a shared pianist Györgi Hercog or George Herzog—moved to New York City to study
humanity, musicologists assigned that humanity to people in only one part of with anthropologist Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1925. As one of the
the globe, the West, depriving the rest of it. As is well known, they deemed only practitioners of Comparative Musicology to obtain an academic job in the
non-Europeans “primitive,” or as at an earlier stage of human development United States before the second world war, Herzog’s story is emblematic of what
23. Guido Adler, “Umfang, Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft,” Vierteljahrsschrift the field became there. Herzog brought with him the bibliographic and data-col-
für Musikwissenschaft 1 (1885), 5–20. lecting methods he had learned while working as a cataloguer in Hornbostel’s
24. Erich M. von Hornbostel, “Die Probleme der vergleichenden Musikwissenschaft: archive, which he eventually replicated in the United States by creating the
Vortrtag, gehalten an der Ortsgruppe Wien der IMG. am 24. März 1905,” Zeitschrift der interna-
Archives for Traditional Music at Indiana University. Herzog had not studied
tionalen Musikgesellschaft 7, no. 3 (1905): 85. Hornbostel is referring to Hanslick’s Musikalisch-
Schönen (musically beautiful) here. with Hornbostel, but rather perhaps audited some courses, lived with him, and
worked for him as an unpaid assistant; the model Hornbostel gave him of free of a musical stenographer. As a consequence, Herzog unknowingly became
labor in the service of colonial bureaucracy shaped his life.25 In Berlin, Herzog the perfect, polyglot, erudite, fastidious bureaucrat for the already established
had also audited Diedrich Westermann’s courses at the Friedrich-Wilhelms- settler colonial music system in the US university. Two years before graduat-
Universität (today Humboldt University).26 Westermann was a specialist on ing in 1938, Herzog launched his first class on “Primitive Music” at Columbia
African languages who had exploited prisoners-of-war for his phonetic research University, basing it almost entirely on Hornbostel’s methodological founda-
during World War I, was heavily implicated in German colonialism in Africa, tions.29 He offered variations of this class at Columbia until 1947 and then at
and led the deeply compromised Deutsches Auslandswissenschaftliches Institut Indiana University into the 1960s, mentoring Bruno Nettl, David McAllester,
during the Nazi period. Herzog took courses with Westermann in Ewe, Hausa, and other founding fathers of the later discipline of Ethnomusicology.
transcribing unwritten languages with phonetic exercises, and the people and In the United States, Comparative Musicology and Comparative Literature
languages of Africa. He inherited from his teacher a linguistic orientation developed differently as settler colonial sciences. Some comparativists in music
towards music and sound—a direction he strengthened in the United States collaborated in establishing the archives that robbed Native Peoples of their
under the guidance of Edward Sapir. He also inherited condescending attitudes power and voice; comparativists in literature supported that settler colonial sys-
towards the colonized.27 This experience formed the basis for Herzog’s later tem from a distance by maintaining a sharp division between their worldliness
close collaboration and friendship with Melville J. Herskovits, with whom he and indigeneity. When Louise Rosenblatt—Margaret Mead’s roommate and a
also felt a connection because of their common Jewish heritage, and who was student in Franz Boas’s classes—was deciding whether to study Anthropology
instrumental in founding African Studies as a discipline in the United States. or Comparative Literature in 1925, for example, her Jewish parents intervened
Comparative Musicology became a settler colonial science when Boas to say they did not want her travelling around the world as an anthropologist.
enlisted Herzog to contribute to his comprehensive project of gathering vast Perhaps they were aware of the dangers women faced in the field in the United
amounts of detailed information on North American Native Peoples with the States—an expression of the reproduced violence of settlement.30 In any case,
goal of determining geographical distribution of their characteristic musical they preferred Louise stick to Paris, where she was allegedly out of harm’s way,
styles. Herzog had been accepted into the Ph.D. program at Columbia on the and where she could study Comparative Literature with Baldensperger, which
basis of a bluff—his claim that he had completed studies in Budapest, Vienna, she did. During his visiting professor appointments at Columbia University
and Berlin when he had not.28 In spite of this, his musical training and ear greatly (1917–1919), Harvard (1935–1940), and the University of California-Los
impressed Boas, who came to rely on him as a go-to person for all questions Angeles (1940–1945), Baldensperger had managed to maintain the inviolable
about music—a privilege Boas never granted to other students who worked for Eurocentric frame of Comparative Literature intact even when transplanting
him, including Zora Neale Hurston and Helen Heffron Roberts. Boas also relied it into new contexts.31 It had become a “safe” white comparative discipline, as
on Herzog to transcribe recorded music and develop new recording technology Comparative Musicology and Anthropology were not, in the US context.
to facilitate fieldwork—relegating him in this way to the intellectual position The settler colonial history of Comparative Musicology in the United
25. Herzog studied Piano with Kurt Börner and Music Theory, Music History, and States had consequences for how music scholars later defined their methods
Orchestration at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin from April 1921 to July 31, 1922. I am and objects of study. The “folk” became for them a thorny subject. Herzog
grateful to archivist Antje Kalcher at the Universität der Künste Berlin for helping me to deter- tellingly titled the course he taught for decades “Primitive” rather than “Folk”
mine this information.
music, for example, distinguishing between Hornbostel’s colonial methods
26. Herzog registered as an auditor in 1922/23 to take courses in “Ethnology” (Ethnologie)
and Musicology (Musikwissenschaft), and in 1924/25 to take courses in Musicology and then and Folklore Studies as practiced in the United States, with which he was also
Philosophy. See HU UA, Rektor und Senat, Listen der männlichen Gasthörer, 1922–23, entry no.
851, Humboldt Universität, and HU UA, Rektor und Senat, Listen der männlichen Gasthörer, 29. Herzog’s notes for some of these classes are kept in his uncatalogued archive in the
1924–25, entries no. 1263 and 1273. I am very grateful to Heather Foster, the archivist at the Archives for Traditional Music at Indiana University. I am deeply grateful to Alison McClanahan
Universitätsarchiv der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin for providing this information for me. for allowing me access to these materials.
27. For Westermann’s courses during Herzog’s time as an auditor, see the 30. Megan Steffen, “A Mystery in the Archives: The Historiography of Denial, Henrietta
Vorlesungsverzeichnisse of the Friedrich-Wilhelm Universität from these years. Schmerler’s Rape and Murder and Anthropology’s Project of Prevention,” American
28. I explore this history in more detail in an upcoming series of articles on Settler Colonial Anthropologist 123, no. 4 (December 2021): 1–13.
Humanists and the Racial Foundations of Comparison, in which I also compare Herzog’s expe- 31. See Louise Rosenblatt, interviewed by Ed Edwin, 1982, available as transcript and
rience to that of Zora Neale Hurston, whose transcript, in contrast, was scrupulously examined recording, catalogued as “Reminiscences of Louise Michelle Rosenblatt, 1982,” Columbia
for any missing requirements when she applied to study English at Barnard College in 1925. University Libraries, https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/4072942.
deeply involved. But Herzog also had a strong understanding of folk music with the phrase, “‘Global’ is hot.”36 Without doubt, they are right; the “global
within modernism, having studied with Zoltán Kodály at the Franz Liszt turn” has become the latest new fad across the humanities. But such trends
Academy of Music in Budapest. He was instrumental in bringing Béla Bartók come and go, and none of them have ever been able to provide Musicology
to the United States in the 1940s as well, and assimilated Bartók’s methods by with the elixir of youth it seeks to reverse its aging as a compromised Western
working closely with him on the publication of Serbo-Croatian Folk Songs.32 discipline.
Finally, Herzog grappled with the rise in his time of “popular music”—a cate- Many global music historians get around their lack of a concept of the world
gory that blurred multiple boundaries and has remained highly problematic.33 by claiming they embrace the global as a way of “decolonizing” the West—a
The discomfort music scholars feel in defining the folk and popular continues goal that reifies Adler’s original dichotomic model. Structural white ignorance
to the present day. Whereas comparativists in literature have seemingly solved may be operating in our collective denial of how the globalization of capital is
the problem of the folk and thus today can gallantly refer back to formalist extended through the spatial project of global music history, and how little this
traditions of literary analysis based on them (Vladimir Propp, etc.) when they has to do with decolonization.37 This may perhaps be the reason musicologists
wish, music scholars are still mired in epistemic confusion about the musi- turn to Comparative Musicology as their foil, without engaging with its history,
cal work as it relates to written and oral traditions, and only slowly recovering scholarship, or methods. They condemn it on moral and intellectual grounds,
from the trauma of past analytical violations in the name of formalism, which without discussing it in any detail. Stokes describes Comparative Musicology as
are so profound the slightest memory of them is still triggering. Johann Kroier “complicit in the racial crimes of the 20th Century” in one breath, for example,
succinctly and somewhat disturbingly describes this disciplinary path as, “that while reducing it to a few texts in German that nobody reads anyway in the
bumpy road from a science with ambitions for exactness through a collecting next.38 Bloechl similarly speaks of Comparative Musicology as a “failed modern
discipline under the influence of transitory anthropological macro-theories up experiment,” the tenets of which were later “weaponized in European and set-
to a branch of the humanities that has to represent the clear consciousness of tler projects of colonial and racial domination.”39 Are they implying Hornbostel
the cultural sciences.”34 and Herzog are guilty of such crimes, even as their lives as well were shattered
Locked in this icy history from which it has spectacularly failed to break by Nazi persecution? Or Zora Neale Hurston? It seems the story needs to be
until recently, Musicology has become a broken discipline as Chua daringly told with much more nuance. And why do global music historians mention
proclaims.35 I agree with his assessment. Comparative Musicology at all? Perhaps they need Comparative Musicology
as their moral shadow—the Hyde to their Jekyll—the easy target that justifies
Global Music History’s Ideological Dilemmas their new politics without grounding them, or that allows them to be in the
world again without rethinking the world.
It is a lot to ask of global music history to fix this mess, and to develop the Global music history may in fact actively divert from settler colonialism. At a
methods and objects to create worlds, given this disastrous history. And yet the recent meeting of the Alliance for Multi-campus Inclusive Graduate Admissions
practitioners of this subdiscipline seem to suggest it can. Calls for papers and (AMIGA) project at UC Davis, I learned that departments frequently recruit
mission statements burst with excited claims about decolonization, progress, international students to meet demands for diversity, misunderstanding how
renewal, and growth. There is a lot of hype as the global becomes the academy’s this practice causes them to neglect the specific need for proactive admission
latest brand. The Working Group of the Future Histories of Music Theory of the policies to ensure inclusion of historically underrepresented, first generation,
International Musicological Society opens its statement of purpose, for example, and underserved college students from within the United States.40 Could global
music history similarly be functioning to distract from local issues in music
32. Béla Bartók and Albert B. Lord, Serbo-Croatian Folk Songs: Texts and Transcriptions of
Seventy-Five Folk Songs from the Milman Parry Collection and a Morphology of Serbo-Croatian 36. See “Going Global, in Theory,” IMS Musicological Brainfood 3, no. 1 (2019): 3–5.
Folk Melodies, with a forward by George Herzog (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951). 37. I use the term “white ignorance” in Charles Mills’s sense. See, for example, “White
33. Herzog’s struggle with this terminology is strikingly evident in his “Research in Ignorance,” in Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism (Oxford, 2017):
Primitive and Folk Music in the United States,” American Council of Learned Societies Bulletin 49–71.
24 (April 1936): 1–97. 38. Stokes, “Notes and Queries on ‘Global Music History’,” 3–4.
34. Johann Kroier, “Music, Global History, and Postcoloniality,” International Review of the 39. Bloechl, “Editorial,” 174.
Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 43, no. 1 (June 2012): 159. 40. “The Amiga Project,” AMIGA, accessed September 25, 2023, https://www.projecta-
35. Chua, “Global Musicology: A Keynote without a Key,” 117–19. miga.org/.
studies far more difficult to resolve? Does it in any way replicate progressive This global space is less unified than hoped, as evinced by the fact that
educators’ problematic goal of establishing “cosmopolitan internationalism” as scholars in the different music subdisciplines conceive of it so differently and
a path to securing a liberal democracy in the United States in the 1930s, which apply to it such different methods. The only thing they all seem to share is their
masked and denied racial inequality and injustice? Or could it be distracting cartographic images of the world and disgust with Comparative Musicology.
from the globalization of capital by claiming resistance to it as it extends its Music theorists, for example, sometimes seem to imagine the global as a space
domain? Given how settler colonial systems often perpetuate themselves in which to create a mythical library of Alexandria containing every music the-
through white ignorance and acquisition of lands and goods, I worry about ory text ever written. Tellingly, they focus primarily on the history of music the-
music scholars leaping joyfully into the world while leaving local history unex- ory over phenomenological analytical method.43 This allows them to compare
amined at home (although doing one doesn’t exclude doing the other and very texts and concepts, without necessarily worrying about the world. In a very
many global music historians do both).41 One need only consider how music compelling article on tuning, Alex Rehding takes as his model for comparative
theorists are currently distracting themselves by fixating on the racism of one music theory G.E.R. Lloyd’s “comparison of cultures,” comparative organology,
Austrian theorist whom only a tiny elite knows, while the long, harrowing his- Begriffsgeschichte, and the structural comparison of myths as exemplified in Lisa
tory of music theory’s complicity in missionary settlers’ conquest of the west— Raphals’s Knowing Words, for example. These methods are useful to the task at
with Bible and music theory textbook in hand—hides in plain sight. hand, but perhaps not for worlding music or music theory because they are
If global music history is not conceiving the world, developing historio- focused largely on conceptual history, classifying, and language. Musicologists,
graphic methods, or decolonizing the West, then what is it doing? It seems pri- unable to escape questions of aesthetics so easily, tend to focus more on net-
marily to be creating a space for an imagined scholarly community that seeks to works, encounter, exchange, and reception.44 Ethnomusicologists, in contrast,
move beyond the national. In this community everyone is included and no one feel they have already been all along “a global, interdisciplinary network of
is left out. It is made up primarily of scholars who are Westernized, and who individuals and institutions engaged in the study of music across all cultural
have a place in the Westernized academy. They are mobile and can cross bor- contexts and historical periods.”45 The ICTM study group on global history
ders. One could call them a cosmopolitan elite (keeping in mind both the pos- speaks of increasing “global interaction of regional cultures,” and of creating “a
itive and negative interpretations of that term). In contrast to Stefano Harney’s global network of cross-cultural relationships largely neglected by conventional
and Fred Moten’s undercommons, or the lumbung of ruangrupa, who curated musical historiography.46
the documenta 15, global music history as a collective is not critical of or resist- As this brief analysis shows, the global serves for music scholars primarily
ing Westernized institutions.42 Although its practitioners want to transcend as a container in Cheah’s sense—a space they can fill up with a wide array of
national boundaries, they usually end up reinforcing them. This is because the methods, objects, and relations, and in which they can reflect on how to free
global forces them to talk about music in relation to geopolitical identity, or to themselves from the concept and reality of Western music, which seems to be
become cultural ambassadors or diplomats of their own countries—roles that their greatest goal. The discussions these music scholars are having could not
may prove limiting to some in the long run. At times, they speak of packing be further removed from those in Comparative Literature, which, since Spivak
this whole small world into the Westernized university’s standard music history and with Cheah and others, is moving away from spatial and towards temporal
curriculum, adding to it in a way that mimics their institutions’ diversity poli- concepts of the world. In this regard, I would conclude as I began with the idea
tics in its focus on representation. that global music history is not a heuristic, concept, pedagogy, or method, but
43. See Alexander Rehding, “Fine-Tuning a Global History of Music Theory: Divergences,
41. Jessica Perea Bissett beautifully addresses this point in “Introducing [Our] Peoples, Zhu Zaiyu, and Music-Theoretical Instruments,” Music Theory Spectrum 44, no. 2 (June 17,
Places, and Projects: Indigelogical Ways of Doing Global Music History Homework.” 2022), https://doi.org/10.1093/mts/mtac004.
42. See, for example, Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, Undercommons: Fugitive Planning 44. See David Irving, “IMS Study Group ‘Global Music History’: Mission Statement,”
and Black Study (New York: Minor Compositions, 2013), https://www.minorcompositions. International Musicological Society, accessed September 25, 2023, https://www.musicology.
info/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/undercommons-web.pdf. See also Lumbung Erzählen, ed. org/networks/sg/global-history-of-music.
Harriet C. Brown (Berlin: Hatje Cantz/documenta, 2022); The Collective Eye im Gespräch 45. See “The Society for Ethnomuiscology,” SEM, accessed September 25, 2023, https://
mit ruangrupa: Überlegungen zur kollektiven Praxis (Berlin: Distanz, 2022); Documenta 15 www.ethnomusicology.org.
(Kassel: Museum Fridericianum gGmbH, 2022), art exhibition, accessed September 25, 2023, 46. “ICTM Study Group on Global Music History: Mission Statement,” International
https://documenta-fifteen.de/en/lumbung/; “Lumbung,” Friends of the Lumbumg Worldwide, Council for Traditional Music, accessed September 25, 2023, http://ictmusic.org/group/
accessed September 25, 2023, https://lumbung.space/. global-history-music.
rather a decentering perspective. In spite of all my criticisms, I think it has been power are not concealed but necessarily revealed.” Committed to close read-
immensely generative for scholarship. I don’t think it will fix, redeem, decol- ings, she imagines scaling back and forth between “the world” and “the text,”
onize, or cure Musicology, because it does not address its institutional condi- revealing relations in the form and content of the literature itself.48 I often like
tions. Maybe it was unrealistic to expect such a quiet revolution from within. students to read Shih’s work in the first week of class, and/or other essays from
the collection in which it is published.
Teaching Comparison as Relation I also like to choose a very clear geopolitical frame for a course—one always
smaller than the world. In a recent assigned general education class for 120
At the moment I respond to the worries I have voiced above by seeking students on “Literature from the Enlightenment to the Twentieth Century,” I
pedagogical tools outside of global music history. I consider teaching a work in began by giving the course title the subtitle “Imperial, National, and Global
progress, however, and thus anything I say here captures only the moment of Encounters,” augmenting the temporal frame with a sense of geopolitical rela-
my current understanding and not a fixed program. I also think teaching takes tion. Even though that may sound like I am doing something like global music
place experientially between teachers and students and develops over time in history, my methods, goals, projected outcomes, concepts of the world, and
a course and thus cannot be summarized with prescriptive pronouncements. notion of worlding distinguish what I do from that subdiscipline. I ground the
In my view, it is important to teach students method, and I find comparative course in the material reality of the plantation economy that fueled the rise of
methods in literature immensely productive. I like the path Cheah suggested in capitalism and the European powers. Thus I begin with the Haitian rather than
the article I cited at the opening of this essay, for example. The solution to world French revolution. We read a selection of writings on race in the Enlightenment,
literature’s banalization, he argues, is not to return to the Eurocentric and spir- Hume, and Kant, before analyzing Olaudah Equaino’s narrative and Diderot’s
itualist Goethean norms, but rather to “reattach literature to the unequal world anti-colonial writings. I then pursue the theme of changing French and German
of contemporary capitalist globalization and rethink its capacity for world-mak- relations with the Caribbean throughout the course, moving from reading Baron
ing from the ground up.” He understands this world-making in terms of Martin de Vastey, Heinrich von Kleist’s Die Verlobung in Santa Domingo through Zora
Heidegger’s notion of “worlding,” and expands out from it to speak of modeling Neale Hurston’s ethnographic work on Jamaica and Haiti and Aimé Césaire’s
an alternative temporality and world to that created by global capitalism. By Cahiers de retour au pays natal. I introduce nineteenth century Orientalism
building bridges to other people, through “intercourse,” he argues, people learn to pursue a second thread on the relationships between Germany, France and
how to exist in other modes of human life, telling stories to each other, translat- Persia/Iran. Here we read Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan, Sadegh Hedayat’s
ing languages, engaging in cosmopolitan literary intercourse—is prior to the short stories, the poetry of Forough Farrokhzad, and Golnoosh Nour’s short
emergence of the rational subject and thus “the ontological condition of the stories. I frame modernism as queer modernism with Oscar Wilde and Nella
possibility of world literature.”47 Larsen, in this way centering LGBTQIA+ creative expression in literary history.
Rather than turn to Heidegger, I embrace Shu-Mei Shih’s idea of relational At the end of the course I sometimes invite contemporary writers to class and
comparison, which resembles Cheah’s call for relation and connectivity. In a assign students the task of comparing texts between the present and the past
series of articles published in the last decade, Shih urges comparativists to think and across geopolitical space. Because I focus on literary techniques we can do
more about the ground of their comparisons, and about the integrated world very close readings; this is where the work of worlding takes place. Last fall we
systems, rather than national contexts, in which they take place. Comparison compared Kafka’s In der Strafkolonie and Zora Neale Hurston’s Tell My Horse,
as relation, she writes, means “setting into motion historical relationalities for example, with the goal of understanding how each represents ethnography
between entities brought together for comparison, and bringing into relation in a colonial context, and also of exploring how literature can resist capitalism
terms that have traditionally been pushed apart from each other due to certain and create a world, as Cheah argues.
interests, such as the European exceptionalism that undergirds Eurocentrism.”
Shih considers comparative relation an ethical practice where “the workings of
48. See Shu-mei Shih, “Comparison as Relation,” in Comparison: Theories, Approaches,
47. Cheah, “Global Literature, World Literature and Worlding Literature: Some Conceptual Uses, ed. Rita Felski and Susan Stanford Friedman (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University
Differences,” 96–97. I see here echoes of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s notion of the planetary, Press, 2013), 79–97. See also Shu-mei Shih, “Comparative Racialization: An Introduction,”
and found it worthwhile in this context to reread Death of a Discipline (New York: Columbia, PMLA 123, no. 5, Special Topic: Comparative Racialization (October 2008): 1347–62; and
2005). “World Studies and Relational Comparison,” PMLA 130, no. 2 (2015): 430–438.
If I were to teach the same course in music, I would adapt it dramatically I would like to teach a course that considers the dual projects of climate
to allow for music’s ontological difference while seeking to maintain Shih’s justice and constructive reparations through music, literature, and sound with
method of relational comparison. I would not choose the global as the course’s the aim of achieving global social justice. I want to center this course on the
unifying concept, because it is too vague. Which course concept I chose would Caribbean. I would again start with the Haitian revolution, and I would frame
depend entirely on the outcomes I seek. If the course catalogue required me to this class within the history of the global racial empire, rather than in terms
teach European music history I would still start with the Haitian revolution, but of global music history. It would take considerable conceptual work to under-
probably not attempt to show how European composers reacted to their knowl- stand the role music played and plays in distribution, and this would be the
edge of it, or music from there (as I did in the literature course with Kleist, for task I would set for myself in preparing this course. I would focus on how this
example), because I would not want to force music into the straightjacket of history plays out in specific communities in Los Angeles, with the goal of active
becoming a solely representative art gutted of its aesthetic content. I would also engagement towards global social justice.
have to decide whether we would study sound, acoustics, circulation, musi- Up to this time, however, I have not yet assigned any published work on
cal scores, aesthetics, etc., or any other angle on music, or a combination of global music history in the classes I do currently teach. In the Proseminar in
these. In other words, I would choose what kind of musical object or action Comparative Literature I have been teaching recently, we discuss historical
to present. I would also take into consideration that music did not circulate as debates on world literature over ten weeks. I do not assign any texts on global
translated texts could in the time period in question, and thus was not received music history because I find they are not related. From my perspective, debates
and cannot be compared in the same way as literature. on the global in music have so far appeared very “in house”—concerned more
In the past few months, I have been thinking about a course based on with the history of the Westernized music disciplines than with worlding
Olúfémi O. Táíwò’s constructive view of reparations, which he describes as “a music. In my music classes I do hope in the future to assign the articles by
historically informed view of distributive justice, serving a larger and broader Stokes, Chua, and Bloechl that I have critiqued in this essay, because I believe in
worldmaking project.”49 Táíwò explains his concept of the world in very clear modeling difference of opinion honestly as a crucial pedagogical strategy, and
terms. He analyses what he calls the “Global Racial Empire,” a “social system I would want the students to decide what they think for themselves. In case it
of distribution built by the converging processes of trans-Atlantic slavery and was not obvious, these articles inspired me, even as I argued against them. It is
colonialism” that unequally distributed advantages and disadvantages, wealth, for this reason that I look forward to further engagement with global music his-
rights, and burdens over time.50 “Global racial empire, and its history of slav- tory. While hoping for more robust concepts, methods, and theorization for the
ery and colonial domination,” he writes, “will be fully conquered only when subdiscipline, I wait with bated breath to see what its practitioners will do next.
their effects on the accumulations of advantages and disadvantages are also
conquered.”51 I appreciate in particular Táíwò’s care in urging attention to the
geography and history of the world system, rather than being content to take
mere “snapshots” of certain parts of it, as I believe global music historians do
today. In fighting for global reparations and social justice, he argues for the
need to create “specific global superstructures—institutions, associations,
chains of production, and norms—to ground a distributive justice analysis for
specific historical reasons.”52 And he powerfully asserts that climate justice and
reparations are the same project and arise from the same political history, and
thus remaking the world requires commitment to both.
49. Olúfémi O. Táíwò, Reconsidering Reparations (New York: Oxford University Press,
2022), 74.
50. Táíwò, Reconsidering Reparations, 10.
51. Táíwò, 87.
52. Táíwò, 84.
“African Music is Global Music” 139
of African Studies because there was no music department then. However, the
Institute of African Studies was beginning to push for the “African story,” which
“African Music is Global Music”: On Teaching Global encourages the discussion of African stories by Africans in the decolonial
context. The Department of Music was founded in 2012, but there had been
Music in Nigeria and Making Historical Global Music musical activities such as Music Circle and University Choir at the university.
in Boston The University Choir started in 1973. It offers performances at the university
convocation ceremonies with participants from the U.S. and the U.K.1
The university became very serious about the value of the music depart-
Michael Birenbaum Quintero and Samuel Ajose
ment in a premier university. Since 2012, the department has made clear that
the purpose was to produce musicians for Nigeria. However, in line with the
vision of the university to be a “world-class institution gearing towards societal
needs,” the curriculum we use is based on the curriculum set by the National
Universities Commission, a Nigerian governmental body. This Commission
Part One: On Positionality designs a highly Europeanized music curriculum and sets the “benchmark”
for all universities in Nigeria. Very little in the curriculum—only one or two
Hedy Law: Sam, can you tell us about yourself and your positionality? semesters—is focused on Nigerian or African music. The emphasis is more
on Western classical music than African music. This emphasis is beyond our
Samuel Ajose: I completed my doctoral studies at the University of Ibadan and control because the Commission determines the benchmark, which influences
currently serve as its Acting Head of the Department of Music. I also coordinate our course design. By comparison, instructors in the global north have a lot of
a departmental-based research project: “Ibadan Sustainable Music.” This project flexibility in teaching. An instructor can pick a course, design it, and decide
aimed at archiving endangered kinds of music in Ibadan—one of Africa’s larg- how to teach it.
est cities. I teach the undergraduate courses Basic Music Appreciation, History In my university, we have courses such as the History of Western Art Music
of Western Music, Music Education, Music Theatre, and Music in Religion. I (from the Renaissance to the twentieth century), Tonal Harmony, Theory of
also teach the graduate course Transcription and Analysis of African Music. Music, Analysis of Western Music, Counterpoint, Music Appreciation, Music
As an ethnomusicologist, I am interested in music in African Christianity or Education, World Cultures, Musical Theatre, as well as African Music and
Pentecostalism, community music, and music education. My students are pri- Nigerian Music. This list shows that our curriculum is highly Westernized.
marily from middle-class families across various ethnic sections in Nigeria, We must help students understand that music does not just consist of Western
with minimal background in Western classical music. As an African scholar, European music. Students need to know European music and music of world
I employ African music, mainly Nigerian/Yoruba music, to teach global music cultures. That is why students need to interact with music beyond their imme-
using narratives from African/Yoruba diaspora experiences. I introduce my diate environment.
students to music from global contexts through musical performances in for-
mal and informal settings. HL: How do you engage with the idea of globality and global music history in
your teaching?
HL: Can you tell us something about your university?
SA: The idea of globality refers to anything non-Western. Recent conversations
SA: I teach at the University of Ibadan, the premier university in Nigeria. It was around decoloniality and decolonizing music education, even when they could
established in 1948 as an institution affiliated with the University College of only take place informally, have informed us that the music of our people is a
London and became an independent University in 1962. This history has made kind of global music. African music is global music. I should emphasize that
musicians essential to the university. I did my doctoral studies at the Institute African music is a massive field. The same is true for Nigerian music, as there
138 1.
140 Journal of Music History Pedagogy “African Music is Global Music” 141
are over 400 ethnic groups in Nigeria, and each group has its music. I only teach epistemes in Foucault’s The Order of Things and the Nietzschean model of the
Nigerian music that focuses on the Southwestern part of Nigeria. genealogy to Omi and Winant’s idea of racial formations and racial projects.
We need to talk about traveling musicians in our African communities. These
topics shape our students’ idea of music beyond the Western model. We have Part Two: On Syllabus
music in Ghana; we have music in South Africa; we have music in Colombia.
We invite performers to conduct workshops on folk tunes and indigenous HL: What kinds of activities have you designed for your teaching that include
music workshops to introduce our students to different perspectives. Because a global component, and how do you teach global music history in your insti-
the curriculum is handicapped by the University Commission that determines tutional setting?
the benchmark, which decides the content that instructors need to teach in
the classroom and the review process, we bring up—in an informal way—the MBQ: To address this, let me first talk about our Music Cultures of the World
kinds of music of other communities so that they play the same role as Western class, one of the classes that undergraduate music majors have to take as part of
classical music. I teach students a global concept using local knowledge, which the music history sequence (See Appendix 1). According to the United States’
is not in the curriculum. To introduce this material is to incur extra work for NASM (National Association of Schools of Music) accreditation system, stu-
the instructors. In my teaching, the music of other cultures is synonymous with dents have to learn about diverse musical cultures to graduate, and this class is
global music history. To my mind, this is the only way to understand the notion one way to fulfill this requirement. Despite NASM, this requirement was only
of “global music history” in the curriculum of Nigeria. in place in my institution since 2020, when a student petition started the move
toward anti-racist and decolonized programming and education. This class is
HL: Thanks, Sam. Michael, how about your positionality? usually fully enrolled, with about twenty-five students, including some instru-
mentalists and composers and usually a lot of music education majors.
Michael Birenbaum Quintero: I work at a private research university but in a The course is not designed to cover all parts of the world. Instead, it focuses
school of music. Students here experience a conservatory environment within a on particular topics and themes, and I use different specific musical settings
larger research university. I approach global music history as an ethnomusicol- as case studies. We begin by discussing ethnomusicology and imagining an
ogist, that is, by applying historical inquiry to ethnomusicology rather than by ethnomusicology of Western popular music. I use Thomas Turino’s Music as
extending historical musicology to include the world beyond the North Atlantic. Social Experience to address this area. In terms of topics, we begin with the idea
I am also Chair of the Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, so I of organizing sound and the aesthetics of performance in West Africa using
am responsible for curricular issues in both historical musicology and ethno- Ruth Stone’s book, Music in West Africa. Then we’ll switch to another area, say,
musicology. I try to work through the curriculum for a doctoral program and a Indian music, to describe another system for organizing sound (usually rhyth-
master’s program in musicology but also in ways that serve the broader School mic cycles, specifically). Then we’ll switch to another theme, say, music and
of Music. We make decisions keeping in mind the different student constituen- sociality, using examples from South India, the Andes, Bali, and Korea. Along
cies—performers, music educators, theorists, and composers. the way, of course, I have to make sure students understand that these musical
I should also say that, as far as my research and my outlook are concerned, systems are not fungible and that disarticulating, say, scale construction from
questioning the reification and taking for granted of ethnic and national cate- a larger whole is a totally artificial exercise. And at the same time, as I try to
gories—which is so fundamental to ethnomusicology and which, in my view, present music and culture as a kind of whole, we also have to problematize
the discipline continues to rely on in rather conservative unhelpful ways—is an non-historical, synchronic analysis of isolated field settings, that privilege an
essential part of what I do, at the same time as I have both political and analyt- anthropological idea of culture but collapse history. So we do a discussion of a
ical commitments to understanding how those categories function within what modern political movement’s use of music in West Africa to follow up Stone’s
Cedric Robinson called racial capitalism. In my book on Black music on the book.
Pacific coast of Colombia and the category of Black music, I had to do a histor- We go through different themes organizing sound, organizing time, sound
ical unearthing of both the construction of Blackness and the construction of structure and social structure, and so on, and the global historical compo-
music in the context of Blackness. Historical materialism is a crucial part of my nent comes toward the end of the class. It is set up in this way because I feel
method. It’s also been critical to my thinking also to apply the historicization of that students need to have all these issues under their belt to recognize how
contemporary music making can show the thumbprints of history. One of the
first case studies comes from Robin Moore’s Music in the Hispanic Caribbean. MBQ: What do you mean by the “functional”?
We listen very closely, for example, to the early Spanish and African influences
on Caribbean music. Then we discuss creolization processes, transnational SA: When the curriculum reads “teach music education,” we must teach the
Caribbean music, different contradance forms, and mixed creole forms. Finally, “structural”—meaning learning theories, teaching methods, and all of that. I try
we study the contemporary Hispanophone Caribbean in terms of music from to move beyond the “structural” to the “functional” by asking questions: How
the slave trade, etc., and more recent engagements by Black musicians in the is music education within traditional African contexts? How do they develop
Hispanophone Caribbean with global Black musics. The last time I taught this their curriculum? The Commission established the curriculum because the
course, we were able to invite an exciting Cuban musician called Yosvany Terry, goal is to consolidate knowledge while considering that practitioners have dif-
a jazz musician initiated into a neo-African religious and musical sodality in ferent levels of learning, etc. But the result is that the curriculum tilts toward a
Cuba. He incorporates elements of this music and cosmology into his work. Western epistemology. For me, we can still use the same knowledge to look at
The second example of the historical component is designed around our contexts. What are the theories of learning implicated in Yoruba? When we
Bulgarian musics, using the content and structure of Tim Rice’s Music in ask these questions, we are not dismissing the “structural.” Instead, we are still
Bulgaria. Again, the struggle for me as an ethnomusicologist is not to globalize engaging our local knowledge using the framework set by the Commission. So
music history but rather to historicize global music, which is so frequently dis- that’s what I mean by informality, i.e., functionality.
cussed in ahistorical terms. I relate a topic in the history of Western art music to our African context.
I tell my students that minstrels were not unique to France. In the Yoruba tra-
SA: In our case, instructors must follow a Europeanized pre-designed cur- dition, we have the Alarinjo (traveling) musicians. My point is that the idea of
riculum that harkens more to Western music, as mandated by the National traveling musicians is not unique to the Western domain.
University Commission. However, Nigerian music scholars are now thinking Another example comes from my music appreciation courses, where
about how best to let our students see that there are several kinds of music I bring fúji music to my class, a topic much neglected in our curriculum. I
performed in the world, as we cannot just limit ourselves to Western classical bring fúji music to my class to teach music fundamentals. I do not have to use
music. As far as curriculum is concerned, it has not been easy to make changes. western religious compositions to teach the call-and-response structure and
Many of our colleagues still stick to Europeanized pedagogy. Not only until performance practice. The informal space I explore is all about survival, i.e.,
very recently have we started advocating for the inclusion of African art music functionality. We decided to use fúji because it is vibrant in the sound space of
composers in our curriculum. Except for individual interventions, how do we Nigeria, especially in Southwest Nigeria. How do we begin to understand this
call our attention and students’ attention to this conversation in informal and music as part of global music? What are the ways this music shaped the idea of
formal ways? global music? How does global music shape local music genres? We bring fúji
to class informally along with other genres such as traditional Nigerian music,
MBQ: You said, Sam, that this curricular change can happen informally. In Nigerian popular musics, and Nigerian art music.
countries like Nigeria or Colombia, the informal sphere is sometimes more In the past, our idea of “global music” was Nigerian art music, with com-
impactful than the formal. If you think about formal economy versus informal positions imitating Western art music models. Popular music, which is gain-
economy, maybe the formal economy moves more capital, but most people act ing widespread interest in the global space, has also been neglected in the
within an informal space. What opportunities does the informal register offer? classroom. Our current interest is to return popular music to the classroom
by studying the interaction between fúji and global practices. For example,
SA: Well, my position does not represent a general position. Yes, I feel that, we now find hip-hop musicians in Nigeria incorporating fúji into their music,
along with colleagues who have been actively participating in this global con- which they perform in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and elsewhere. Some of our
versation of decolonizing music education, we are trying to revise the curricu- students play African instruments for other musicians worldwide using online
lum and bring it up to speed. If we do not have power over curriculum, which recording systems. Technology facilitates us to see that our local indigenous
requires us to teach within a particular structure, we will go a step further and and popular music are also part of a global sound. In this way, we allow our
teach the functional. students to appreciate how Nigerian music has shaped globality.
In terms of history, fúji is a make-up of pre-colonial, colonial, and even to our students, for example, through fieldwork. We go to a particular commu-
post-colonial engagements, which we have begun to historicize, even though nity and ask our students to play music alongside the participants. We ask the
we rely on oral history that is not documented in writing, unlike Nigerian art community members how to produce the sounds. We then discovered that our
music. It is a big challenge for historians of Nigerian music to research this area students come back with this material and use it for all kinds of music making,
within a global music historical context. This challenge prompts us to organize including writing music for orchestra. For instance, one of our students wrote
a conference on “fújicology” in Ibadan as a way to historicize this music. Is it a Big Band composition based on a folk tune he had learned in our community
true that we had already had a model system in fújì before the advent of the engagement. This music is part of global music.
tonal system in Western music? Along this line of inquiry, we can begin to Similarly, just as they want to hear Handel’s Messiah here in Nigeria, some-
study what it means that before fújì, there was Jùjú culture influenced heavily body in the U.S. wants to listen to this folk tune. We are part of the global music
by the oil boom. The economic influence allowed musicians to buy Western culture. With the help of technology, we can also begin to engage with com-
musical instruments—the guitar, the bass, and all that. Why was the guitar used munities of musicians around the globe. I also started this exchange program
in Jùjú music? This kind of question raises the influence of colonialism on fújì. to bring community musicians into the classroom so that our students can
begin to see the issue of inclusiveness in global knowledge rather than situate it
MBQ: It seems to me that a place to teach global music history is to explore this around a particular region.2
relationship between so-called “traditional” and “popular music.” For example,
you can talk about dundun or batá next to the àpàlà music that built on it, and MBQ: Sam, your experience reminds me of something I have been doing out-
you can talk about àpàlà next to the fúji that built on it, and so on. side the university. I live in a city with a sizable immigrant population. With
other members of the community, we are organizing ways for musicians from
SA: Yes, I agree with you. However, we don’t have the liberties to design the cur- these different ethnic communities to come in and speak to youth here in the
riculum that people in the U.S. and other places have, as I explained a moment community because they don’t have these programs in their schools.
ago. If we had such freedom, I’m sure some of us would have introduced the I don’t consider myself an “activist,” but I do want to be engaged in the world
development of Yoruba popular music to the curriculum. One can look at and in what’s happening in my community. I have long been very interested
Nigerian music from 1920 to 1970. Yet the question is not just about teaching in the possibilities of music and traditional musics as a way of helping peo-
Nigerian music but also about determining which kinds of Nigerian music to ple understand history and sociality. Our family histories can be understood
teach. Igbo music from the east? Hausa music from the north? Niger Delta through music-making and musical taste, especially, for instance, in the case
music from the middle belt? Somebody can spend all four years on Yoruba of children of immigrants or the grandchildren of immigrants. This is a way
music. You cannot exhaust Jùjú music in just three or four classes. Instead, not only to understand the history of the people who came before us, but also
“global” music does not designate one kind of music. African music is part of to fit our own family histories into the frame of broader historical movements.
global music, and you find it in different places. This kind of move between the intimate space of musical performance and the
I engage the idea of global music—that is, African music as a type of global broader scale of society or capital-H History is what ethnomusicologists and
music—by, for example, introducing the students in my music education classes musicologists do all the time. My hope is that people understanding their per-
to community music making and community music education. This approach sonal, intergenerational stories as part of history in a broader sense fosters a
came as a response to the whole idea of decolonization in music education. kind of political analysis of how we got to our current situation.
Because these students, the next generation, want music from their culture. To There is also an encoding of social models in the way that the music works.
this end, I incorporate these informal elements in my course and reorganize In many traditional musical forms in Latin America, the process of learning is
the formal elements. Of the twelve weeks I would have to teach, I compress the built into the structure of the music, so that observation and deep participation
“functional” into a six-week window, leaving the remaining six weeks to teach of the person next to you playing a more complex part while you learn to play a
community music making and music education in our Yoruba communities. basic one is as important as formal pedagogy or isolated individual study. This
We also discuss what we have done in the community. shows not only different kinds of music making but also the ideas of ethical
Since people make music beyond the compositions by Bach and Mozart in personhood that different systems value. These are aspects of a musical system
our communities, which are part of the global music circuits, we teach globality 2.
that are hard to explore within the university because of the logic that governs within Musicology. I believe very strongly that we can look at European music
the curriculum and the type of students we get, and their goals. But tenure is influenced by global processes—mostly obviously colonialism but also other
also part of the university system, and now that I have tenure, I can find ways processes such as the Afro-Iberian string repertory—from its roots. These pro-
to work outside the institution to the benefit of my community and the city I cesses are crucial to the development of Western music after 1600.
live in. The idea of inserting global themes and academic coursework into Historical
I received a grant (see Appendix 2) with Mijente, a nationwide Latinx activ- Performance has been a tough sell because the business model for the School
ist organization. They have a Boston asamblea (chapter). The grant funds what of Music is trying to bring in more students who pay full tuition for popular
I call traditional music talleres (workshops). The project is to work with local instruments. Instead of staffing a continuo professor or funding Master’s and
youth from an organization called “Prevent the Cycle,” which a friend of mine DMA students partially to study Early Music, the College of Fine Arts is more
runs here in Lynn, Massachusetts. In this project, we bring in local musicians interested in getting, say, more piano faculty to bring in more piano students,
from different communities—Dominican, Guatemalan, and Cambodian—that often international students, paying full tuition.
live here. We are bringing in a West African drum master as well. What we Another challenge, or so I hear from my colleagues in the performance
will do is that the kids, who also come from these communities, will play the areas, is that many international students, which are a large part of the student
instruments and learn about their traditions. body, push back against the ideas of global music diversity, anti-racism, and so
Perhaps most importantly, we want the kids to have a working understand- on that became a subject of discussion after the 2020 uprisings here in the U.S.
ing of what needs these musics satisfied in the past and the present for their These students argue that they came here to study music and that these topics
communities. This understanding comes from thinking about Afro-descendant are not what they come to the U.S. to learn. My argument, however, is if they
religiosity in the Dominican Republic or thinking about the post-genocide choose to get a certificate in the U.S., they will necessarily be along for the ride
landscape in Cambodia as a tool for the youth to understand what their polit- for the particularities of this historical moment in the U.S. At this moment
ical needs are in the present. These talleres help the youth understand their that includes a lot of self-questioning about issues of race and power and so
ancestors’ and neighbors’ political struggles, even if they are not of that partic- on that might not be a part of what’s happening in music pedagogy elsewhere
ular ethnic group. They can use this understanding to reflect on their political in the world. A related challenge involves things like student evaluations for
necessities and social and economic conditions. The kids will also do songwrit- faculty members’ tenure and promotion. This kind of pushback can become
ing, which is important as they can experiment with different musical idioms to very dangerous for anyone, especially female professors and professors of color,
reflect on their situation. They will learn to play a little bit and dance a little bit. but it also affects professors who are actively engaged in issues of, say, reper-
Through these activities, they learn about the history of our community. Maybe toire diversity, that the School says it supports but that students might not be
they even learn to question some aspects, like perhaps gender dynamics. The prepared for. The university needs to put a structure in place to legitimate these
project emphasizes the joy of creativity, cultivates the habit of political analysis, topics and state its position explicitly so that faculty are not abandoned when
engages in intergenerational practices, and even critiques ancestral cultures they institute the changes that the institution claims to want.
when necessary.
SA: This issue shows two sides of the coin. Some are interested in opening up
Part Three: On the Challenges to the Teaching of Global Music History the curriculum, but some stay close to the benchmark.
HL: What challenges have you encountered in teaching global music history? Daniel Castro Pantoja: On this thread of challenges, I think Sam is alluding to
a rejection of the global that comes with an institution’s “global strategy”—aim-
MBQ: I teach in Boston, a city known for early music. Our university has a ing to produce future “global citizens.” What do you think about the perils of
Historical Performance program. We have been trying to expand it by including institutionalizing mobility as an educational goal?
global themes within it, say Latin American cathedral music, in the program-
ming. I also see it as a value-added initiative within the musicology program. MBQ: I am glad that you bring up this topic; it is a wonderful way of fram-
We are considering renaming the program Early Music Studies, to emphasize ing the question. For me, the only thing that is maybe more dangerous than
a focus on things like source studies and notation systems and housing it ignoring the global is banalizing it. It’s great if music education students, for
example, are excited to talk about non-Western music as they prepare to teach to the place we are teaching and learning. A history of globality is part of the
music in K-12 classrooms. The challenge is to help them avoid taking a token- formation of a classroom. However, in the context of Ibadan, a city with a long
istic approach. history of Yoruba ethnic group, most people are indigenous, at least to the area.
Another challenge is that there are groups of students who have different In this context, the global and the local flip over in a very peculiar way, as Sam
ways of engaging with issues of musical diversity. The first group is students explains, in that the “local” is supposed to be Western art music—the Bach and
excited about the quaintness of different musical practices—how interesting Beethoven stuff—while the “global” music is “local” African or Nigerian music.
or colorful they are—but who don’t understand the teeth behind the history This reversal is fascinating and ironic.
that produced all these practices. The second group of students refrains from
expressing their points of view because they are fearful of being accused of being
insensitive. In a course I just taught on hip hop, some students were uncomfort- APPENDIX 1
able saying anything at all about hip hop because they did not feel authorized as
white people. This discomfort may be a middle- or upper-class Massachusetts Music Cultures of the World
phenomenon. The third group, often international students, may not find these Prof. Michael Birenbaum Quintero
topics relevant. They feel this is not their fight, not their struggle. The pedagog-
ical challenge is that these three groups of students are in the same classroom Music is more than an art and entertainment, [it] also is
having the same discussions and listening to the same music. Ideally, we can all or may be an expression of culturally shared ideologies and
have at least some degree of a stake without necessarily having ownership over worldviews, a social behavior that reinforces or challenges
social structures and hierarchies, a political tool, a com-
these issues, but it is challenging in practice. modity with economic significance, a mode of healing and
I teach a course on Latino music in the U.S. It includes both U.S. popular therapy, and many other things.
music with Latino participation like punk, disco, hip hop, and jazz, as well as -Timothy Rice, Professor of Music (UCLA)
music like salsa, corridos, and reggaetón. I am careful in that class to include
examples such as Jewish and Italian-American mambo dancers or Filipino and
Mexican-American musical cross-fertilization. I try to help students under- Description
stand that issues of race are everyone’s issues and that all of these different
musical formations come not only from a particular ethnic group but also from If, for the myriad musical cultures around the world, music is not just art and
their interactions with the larger multiethnic society around them. The most entertainment, what else can it be? What do these musics sound like through
critical challenge of all is not students’ passivity but their fear. I think many other ears? Given the mind-boggling diversity of the musical forms of the
students—white students in particular—are fearful about inadvertently saying world, this course offers a sample, introducing students to selected musical
something stupid or ignorant because they are in a place of exploration, or try regions: West Africa, South India, the Andes, Bali, Native North America,
to reproduce platitudes about diversity that they think the professor wants to Pacific Islands, the Hispanic Caribbean, and Bulgaria. Through these musical
hear without actually reflecting on them. practices, we will investigate the many ways in which sound is organized musi-
cally, the way in which it promotes particular kinds of social organization, its
DCP: On the topic of challenges to teaching global music history, it seems to me relationship with the natural and spiritual worlds, and the ways in which, over
that the idea of the “world” is essential to get across the concept of “globality.” the course of history, it has been subject to long-running intra/intercultural
If we think of the world as something out there, beyond our local boundaries, dialogues, struggles, and negotiation processes that continue to produce new
this framing encourages the feeling of indifference (i.e., the issue is none of my hybrid forms. You will also be introduced to basic musical concepts and termi-
business). But perhaps a way to deal with this challenge is to emphasize the nology, and acquire listening skills that will enable you to better encounter and
opposite: Maybe the global is within the local and vice versa. understand music in this course and beyond.
MBQ: This reframing makes a lot of sense. It makes me think about the demo-
graphic in a U.S. classroom. Very few of us in the classroom are indigenous
Objectives historical, and political contexts within which these musical practices
have emerged.
By the end of the semester (assuming you fulfill the expectations below), you • Self-reflexively discuss students’ own musical backgrounds, experiences,
are expected to demonstrate the following learning objectives for each of the and production as a manifestation of personal identity and socio-polit-
HUB required components: ical influences.
Aesthetic Explorations:
Requirements
• Identify important musical styles in at least four selected regions of the
world for this course (for example, West Africa, Brazil, Bulgaria, and Each class meeting will include a reading and listening assignment. These
Korea—this could vary from semester to semester) assignments should be completed BEFORE class and students should be pre-
• Understand a basic history of shifting cultural, economic, political, and pared to discuss and answer questions about the reading. Listening is just as
social dynamics in these selected regions, and relate these changes to important as reading. The listening assignments will encourage us to approach
musical practices across the world. a musical sound-object with creative, productive questions. If there are exten-
• Develop a basic vocabulary and critical listening skills to describe and uating circumstances that keep you from completing them on time, again, let
discuss these musical practices and their significant features. me know beforehand.
• Analyze the effects of political, social, and economic currents on artistic A word on listening assignments: listen with headphones, and without
production. multi-tasking. Listen with attention—don’t just hear!
• Evaluate, describe, and contextualize a live performance of a musical cul- Each student is expected to actively participate in class. This includes speak-
ture that is not familiar to you in a concert report. ing in class but also basic classroom etiquette: eating and drinking is fine, but
• Compare, and contrast similarities and differences among musical cul- being digitally or telephonically distracted or unconscious is not.
tures across the world based on the particularities of the aesthetic, cul-
tural, and historical aspects of each musical culture discussed in class. Course Expectations
• In so doing, distinguish between a variety of terms used to discuss race,
culture, social, and artistic interactions. Each class meeting will include a reading and listening assignment. These
assignments should be completed BEFORE class and students should be pre-
Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy: pared to discuss and answer questions about the reading.
• Listening is just as important as reading. The listening assignments will
• Based on the knowledge of the historical and cultural context as well as encourage us to approach a musical sound-object with creative, pro-
the culturally specific aesthetic norms, preferences, and platforms of the ductive questions.
musical cultures across the world, interpret the aesthetic, political, and • Each student is expected to actively participate in class.
social meanings within specific geographical and historical contexts of • Each student is expected to come to office hours at least twice during the
each musical culture chosen from around the world. semester, once in the first two weeks of class. This will be part of your
• Participate in four workshops of each music and dance from around the attendance grade.
world under discussion to gain experiential knowledge into the partic- • At the beginning of every class, each student will hand me a note card
ular musical culture’s embodied, aesthetic, and cultural meanings. assignment.
• Through short-term ethnographic fieldwork in a cultural community
in Boston, describe and analyze the role of musical practices within
a different culture from your own in relation to the specific cultural,
Final Paper from (i.e., music and politics? Conception of musical time? Music and religion?
Music and gender? etc.). Make sure you have enough resources to draw upon
For the final paper, students will produce a substantial research paper from the to write your paper; to do so, you must attach a preliminary bibliography of at
following three options below. Students will submit a proposal in which they least 10 sources at the time of proposal submission. 7 of them must be academic
specify in as much detail as possible WHAT your subject will be, WHY this resources offline (not from the internet).
subject will be a productive topic for you to apply the knowledge you’ve gained
in this course, and HOW you will go about it, including a bibliography that Option #3: In-depth research paper on an aspect of one of the five music-areas
demonstrates students’ ability to ethically and strategically select relevant bib- we will have studied in this course.
liographic sources or ethnographic data. This proposal will then receive faculty If you came across a topic or an aspect of music cultures in this class that you
feedback, and students will revise a research plan to ensure substantial, rigor- wanted to do further research, you can choose to focus on it to write a paper.
ous, and strategic choice of scholarly sources to address research questions. Describe what specific aspect of the musical culture you will want to write about,
Before producing the final paper, students will develop the research question/ what additional questions and information you’ll pursue in this paper, and how
hypothesis by submitting paper proposal. In consultation with faculty feedback, you will support your analysis and argument. It is important that you present
students will then produce paper outline/draft to demonstrate data-gathering original ideas and information in this paper, going beyond what you’ve learned
skills. With the faculty feedback, students will then build an annotated bibli- in this class. Make sure you have enough resources other than the textbook and
ography to critically assess their sources. Finally, students will submit an out- lecture notes to draw upon to write your paper. To do so, you must attach a pre-
line or draft before their in-class presentations. In their in-class presentations, liminary bibliography of at least 10 sources at the time of proposal submission.
students will present their tentative argument and substantiating sources to 7 of them must be academic resources offline (not from the internet).
receive critique and feedback. Based on these research processes, students will
produce final paper in which students crystallize their analyses, interpretations, Evaluation
and investigation of the research question and clearly organize and communi-
cate their argument in writing. Final grades will be based on all of the above requirements, weighted as follows:
• Class participation: 11%
Option #1: Mini-ethnography. • Written assignments & quizzes: 30%
Identify a musician, a musical group, a musical organization, or musical estab- • Concert report: 5% (extra credit: 5%)
lishment in Boston where you could conduct fieldwork to write your own • Exam #1: 17%
mini-ethnography. The musical practice needs to be from a non-Western area/ • Exam #2: 17%
tradition and something that is not familiar to you, so that you could apply the • Final Research Paper & presentation: 20%
conceptual and technical knowledge you’ve learned in this course to analyze
the musical sounds. You have to be able to spend at least 6 hours total conduct- Materials
ing fieldwork (eg. interviews, attending concerts, etc.) Describe in detail what
kind of resources you have access to, and what kind of fieldwork you’ll conduct, You will need access to Blackboard.
and what particular aspect you’re interested in. Your proposal should include Students should also purchase the following texts and their accompanying CDs.
preliminary bibliography of 3–5 items. • Gold, Lisa. Music in Bali. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
• Moore, Robin. Music in the Hispanic Caribbean. New York: Oxford
Option #2: Research paper on a musical practice/tradition in a particular area University Press, 2009.
that we have not studied in class. • Rice, Timothy. Music in Bulgaria. New York: Oxford University Press,
Identify a musical practice/tradition/area that you’re not familiar with. Then, do 2004.
some research to get a sense of what aspect of the musical culture interests you • Stone, Ruth. Music in West Africa. New York: Oxford University Press,
in particular, and decide what angle you want to present this musical culture 2005.
Sound and visual excerpts from the following texts will be available on Reading: Stone, Ruth. “Performance Facets.” In Music in West Africa, 22–46.
Blackboard, although students are welcome to purchase them as well. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Kwon, Donna Lee. Music in Korea. New York: Oxford University Press, Listening: Examples referred to in text
2011. Topics:
• Turino, Thomas. Music in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press, • Contexts
2008. • Aesthetics
• Turino, Thomas. Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation. Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 2008. Day 5. West Africa—Organizing sound, organizing time
• Viswanathan, T. and Matthew Harp Allen. Music in South India. New Reading:
York: Oxford University Press, 2003. • Stone, Ruth. “Voices: Layered Tone Colors.” In Music in West Africa,
47–63. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Course Schedule • Stone, Ruth. “Time and Polyrhtyhm.” In Music in West Africa, 79–94.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Day 1. Introduction Listening: Examples referred to in text
Topics:
Day 2. An ethnomusicology of here? • Instruments and timbres
Assignment: Sound Log • Rhythm concepts and vocabulary
Reading: • Interlocking time scales
• Read the syllabus.
• Turino, Thomas. “Why Music Matters.” In Music as Social Experience: Day 6. Sound structure and social relations
The Politics of Participation, 1–22. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Reading: Stone, Ruth. “Part-Counterpart: Call and Response.” In Music in
2008. West Africa, 64–78. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Topics: Listening: Examples referred to in text
• Music in our society Topics: Social life and musical performance
• Terminology
Day 7. West Africa— Cutting the Edge, and Praying the Devil Back to Hell
Topic 1. Organizing sound. Case study 1. West Africa. Reading: Stone, Ruth. “Surveying the Trip: Cutting the Edge.” In Music in
West Africa, 95–98. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Day 3. West Africa—Background Listening: Examples referred to in text
Reading: Stone, Ruth. “Traveling to West Africa.” In Music in West Africa, In-class film: Pray the Devil Back to Hell
1–21. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Writing: Do quick research on Charles Taylor and woman’s movement
Listening: Examples referred to in text in Liberia, write up a summary of what you have found out. Based on your
Topics: research, assess Ruth Stone’s textbook you have just read. How did your find-
• Methods ings change the way you understand Liberian music and culture? What are
• Focuses perspectives and information that the author omitted in her writing?
• Musical functions and contexts
• History Topic 1. Organizing sound. Case study 2. South India
Day 4. West Africa—The aesthetics of performance Day 8. South India—Rhythmic organization

Reading:
• Viswanathan, T. and Matthew Harp Allen. “Song in South India.” In • Presentational and participatory styles
Music in South India, 1–14. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. • Social organization
• Viswanathan, T. and Matthew Harp Allen. “Key Concepts in Karnatic • Sound organization
Music.” In Music in South India, 34–41. New York: Oxford University • Virtuosity
Press, 2003.
Topics: Day 11. Exam #1
• Rhythm
• Terminology Topic 2. Sociality. Case Study 3. Andean Wind Music
Day 9. South India—Melodic organization Day 12. Andean Music—Indigenous Wind Ensembles
Written Assignment: Start thinking about your final research project & find a partner
• Review all the notes and listening material on West Africa and South Reading: Turino, Thomas. “Indigenous Wind Ensembles and Community.”
India In Music in the Andes, 1–37. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
• Make a list of keywords, concepts, instruments, names Listening: Examples referred to in text (on Blackboard)
• Make a list of questions or concepts/listening assignment for which you Topics:
need clarifications • Introduction to the Andes
Reading: • Aymara society and social roles
• Viswanathan, T. and Matthew Harp Allen. “Song in South India.” In • Aymara sound roles
Music in South India, 15–33. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Viswanathan, T. and Matthew Harp Allen. “Key Concepts in Karnatic Topic 2. Sociality and society. Case Study 4: Bali
Music.” In Music in South India, 24–55. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2003. Day 13. Bali—Sociality, ritual, and history
Topics: Reading: Gold, Lisa. “The Balinese Ceremonial Soundscape: Simultaneity
• Scales of Soundings.” In Music in Bali, 1–27. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014
• Melody Listening: Examples referred to in text
• Terminology Topics:
• Context
Topic 2. Sociality. Introduction • Ritual
Day 10. Presentational and participatory performance styles Day 14. Bali—Organizing sound
Written Assignment: Concert Review Due
• Review all the notes and listening material on native North America and Reading:
the Pacific islands • Gold, Lisa. “Instruments: Materials, Tuning, and Timbre.” In Music in
• Make a list of keywords, concepts, instruments, names Bali, 28–51. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014
• Make a list of questions or concepts/listening assignment for which you • Gold, Lisa. “Interlocking and Layering: Musical Roles in the Ensemble.”
need clarifications In Music in Bali, 52–70. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014
Reading: Turino, Thomas. “Participatory and Presentational Performance.” Listening: Examples referred to in text
In Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation, 23–65. Chicago: The Topics:
University of Chicago Press, 2008. • Organology
Listening: Examples referred to in text • Timbre
Topics:
Day 15. Bali—Music, Theater, Dance, Storytelling • Colonialism

Reading: Gold, Lisa. “The World of Stories: Integration of Music, Dance, • Creolization
and Drama in Traditional Balinese Theater.” In Music in Bali, 71–92. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2014 Day 20. Hispanic Caribbean—Spanish Colonization
Listening: Examples referred to in text Written Assignment:
Topics: • Review all the notes and listening material on native Andean, Bali, North
• Theatrical and dance genres America
• Temporal organization • Make a list of keywords, concepts, instruments, names
• Make a list of questions or concepts/listening assignment for which you
Day 16. Bali—Sociality, storytelling, and history in the aesthetics of Gong need clarifications
Kebyar Reading: Moore, Robin. “Music and Spanish Colonization.” In Music in the
Reading: Hispanic Caribbean, 30–51. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Gold, Lisa. “Large Scale Form in Gong Kebyar and Its Antecedents.” In Listening: Examples referred to in text
Music in Bali, 126–150. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014
• Gold, Lisa. “Conclusion: Three Themes Revisited at a Cremation Day 21. Library Session
Ceremony.” In Music in Bali, 151–155. New York: Oxford University Meet in the library
Press, 2014
Listening: Examples referred to in text Day 22. Hispanic Caribbean—Creolization and transnational musics
Reading:
Topic 2. Sociality and society. Case Study 5: Korea • Moore, Robin. “Creolized Dance Music.” In Music in the Hispanic
Caribbean, 83–120. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Day 17. Music in Korea • Moore, Robin. “Transnational Caribbean Musics.” In Music in the
Research Proposal / Abstract Due Hispanic Caribbean, 121–146. New York: Oxford University Press,
Reading: Kwon, Donna Lee. “The Court as Cultural Conduit.” In Music in 2009.
Korea, New York, Oxford University Press, 2011. Listening: Examples referred to in text
Day 18. Music in Korea 2 Day 23. The Hispanic Caribbean—Africa in the Americas and Racializing
Reading: Music
• Kwon, Donna Lee. “Korea from Both Sides of the Border.” In Music in Annotated Bibliography Due
Korea, 1–21. New York, Oxford Unviersity Press, 2011 Reading:
• Kwon, Donna Lee. “Negotiating Transnational Flows of Culture.” In Moore, Robin. “Cultural Legacies of the Slave Trade.” In Music in the
Music in Korea, 149–172. New York, Oxford University Press, 2011 Hispanic Caribbean, 52–82. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Moore, Robin. “Dialogues with Blackness.” In Music in the Hispanic
Topic 3: Layered Histories. Case Study 6: The Hispanic Caribbean Caribbean, 177–206. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Listening: Examples referred to in text
Day 19. Hispanic Caribbean—Introduction
Reading: Moore, Robin. “Introduction.” In Music in the Hispanic Caribbean, Day 24. Guest Artist Yosvany Terry
1–29. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Read:
Listening: Examples referred to in text • Transnational Dynamics
Topics: • Yosvany Terry Materials
• Race Listening: New-Throned King
Topic 4: Layered Histories. Case Study 8: Bulgaria The Context

Lynn is a diverse, working-class, heavily immigrant city in the North Shore of
Day 25. Bulgaria—The musical traces of history Massachusetts outside Boston. According to the 2020 census, our city’s popula-
Assignment: Annotated bibliography – at least 5 sources, at least 4 of which tion of 101,000 is 43% Latinx, 36% White,14% Black, and 8% Asian. 37% of us
should be from academic publishers or peer-reviewed journals were born outside the US, especially in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala,
Reading: Rice, Timothy. “The Past in Present Day.” In Music in Bulgaria, Haiti, and Cambodia.3 Slightly more than half of us speak a language besides
18–27. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. English at home—the most popular of the 59 languages spoken in Lynn are
Music: Spanish, Khmer (Cambodian), Arabic, and Haitian Creole. 17% of us live below
• Rice, Timothy. “A Musical Tour.” In Music in Bulgaria, 28–45. New York: the poverty line. Although our city is majority BIPOC and working-class, we
Oxford University Press, 2004. remain politically, economically, and socially marginalized. We are under threat
• Rice, Timothy. “Making Music Yesterday and Today.” In Music in Bulgaria, from gentrifying housing developers, racism in our schools, and foot-dragging
46–55. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. on promised police reforms. We failed in 2021 to make electoral gains against
Listening: Examples referred to in text the vested interests of our local government.
Topic 5: Local and global, hybridization and preservation. Case Study 8: Our Response
Bulgaria A strictly electoral response to the city’s challenges clearly is not enough. We
have to articulate our own vision of the future and construct as much of it as we
Day 26. Bulgaria—National music and world music can ourselves. To do so, we have to have a sense of our own agency to transform
Reading: our circumstances, a coherent political orientation that allows us to analyze and
• Rice, Timothy. “Music and Politics.” In Music in Bulgaria, 56–74. New come up with solutions for those circumstances, a space to engage with other
York: Oxford University Press, 2004. members of different parts of our community to engage in that analysis, and a
• Rice, Timothy. “Bulgarian Music as World Music.” In Music in Bulgaria, sense of common cause—that is, a sense that we are a community in the first
75–86. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. place. More than that, we have to reverse all of the historically accumulated
• Rice, Timothy. “A New Music for a New Era.” In Music in Bulgaria, structures—material, social, and ideological—that make us believe that we are
87–102. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. not only incapable of creating a better world but also undeserving of one.
Traditional cultural practices like music respond to the conditions of a
Day 27. Class presentations and Exam given society, such as the natural environment that’s used in the construction
Final papers due of instruments. Music also encodes historical experiences, tells stories, and pro-
vokes collective emotion. Often music teaches what it means to be an individ-
ual in a collective—the balance between individual improvisation and marking
APPENDIX 2 the beat that one’s fellow musicians depend on. Finally, music allows for people
to take pride in the beauty that their community has created collectively and,
therefore, in themselves.
Sin El Estado Incubator Grant I am proposing Traditional Music Talleres as a means of building a sense
of identity, community, and power for a group of working-class BIPOC youth
leaders from the local Prevent the Cycle organization. The talleres (workshops)
Traditional Music Talleres: Crafting a Shared Future from the Lessons of the
will be held monthly and will bring musicians and culture bearers from the
Past
city’s ethnic communities to give the youth (who belong to many of those com-
Michael Birenbaum Quintero (Boston Asamblea)
munities) an overview of their traditional music and the history and culture
Lynn, MA
3. U.S. Census Bureau, “Lynn city, Massachusetts,” (accessed August 31, 2023), https://
www.census.gov/quickfacts/lynncitymassachusetts.
162 Journal of Music History Pedagogy
that produced it, drawing parallels and contrast with the reality experienced by
youth in Lynn. The artists will teach youth the basics of playing an instrument,
singing, or dancing in these musical traditions. They will also lead songwriting
workshops so that youth can express their own realities and concerns using the
traditional idioms. The emphasis will be on joy, creativity, and cultivating the
habit of political analysis—learning to appreciate the struggle of a particular
society but also not shying away from the ways in which some aspects of tradi-
tional culture (gender dynamics, for example) do not measure up to what we
see as our plan for liberation. After the first cycle, we hope to reapply next year
for talleres emphasizing another aspect of culture (maybe cooking).
The workshops will be facilitated by me, a professional ethnomusicologist
who has worked with traditional musicians and written on the politics of cul-
ture in the Afro-Colombian social movement for more than 20 years.
Timeline
Once we receive the grant (dedos cruzados) we will begin to schedule the tall-
eres. We anticipate holding them beginning in September—that is, when the
youth will be in school. We hope to carry out ongoing assessments of how they
feel things are going after the second taller and make any adjustments we need
to. With this information we plan to seek funding for a second round, either a
deep dive on a single tradition that will allow them to get more proficiency or
maybe shifting to another cultural expression, maybe cooking, visual arts, or
modern non-traditional dance forms like breakdance, salsa, or bachata.
Budget
Culture-bearers: *** Female-led Dominican traditional palo $***
drummers
Culture-bearers: *** Cambodian Traditional Musicians and Dancers $***
Culture-bearers: *** Afro-Boricua drumming (bomba, plena) and $***
dance group
Culture-bearers: *** Colombian traditional gaita and currulao music $***
Culture-bearers: *** Ghanaian master drummer and his group $***
Culture-bearers: *** Brazilian samba master $***
We are requesting $5,000 from Mijente to cover costs.

“Offer Less Variety and Teach Longer Focused Units”:
Lessons Learned in Teaching Global Music History
Bonnie Gordon and Olivia Bloechl
Part One: On Positioning Ourselves as Teachers of Global Music History
Hedy Law: What is your positionality when teaching a global music history
topic?
Olivia Bloechl: One way of answering the positionality question would be to

talk about my subjective positioning, which is important, but perhaps the more
practically important question is the group positioning with every iteration
of the class, vis-à-vis each other and the subject matter. Group positioning
depends of course on the students who take the class, and the student popula-
tion is pretty stable because of the nature of our institutions.
In the case of the University of Pittsburgh, where I teach in the Department
of Music, the students in my undergraduate “Global Music History” course,
the three times I have taught it, have been general education students from
across the university, at all levels and representing many majors. Most are from
Pennsylvania or the mid-Atlantic. Of course, many come from other places in
North America, and my impression is that international students have been
enrolling in increasing numbers, perhaps because of the course topic. So the
students are mainly white, native-born, and Anglo, but with a substantial pres-
ence of American students of color, mainly Asian American, Black, and Latinx,
and international students. I come to the course as a native-born, white Anglo
Midwesterner, which has shaped the material that I select and how I approach
it.
This interview is based on a Zoom conversation between Hedy Law and Daniel Castro
Pantoja and interviewees Olivia Bloechl and Bonnie Gordon that took place on June 29, 2022.
The interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
163
164 Journal of Music History Pedagogy “Offer Less Variety and Teach Longer Units” 165
Daniel Castro Pantoja: Are there any mandates at your institution to teach and you are trying to find these sources (and there are not many), and if you
classes on “global” topics? teach a bit from North America, a bit of European influx of Arabic tradition, a
bit of Europe, and a bit of seventeenth-century China, students think that the
OB: In my institution, there is a “Global Awareness and Cultural Understanding” class is about the “globe.”
general education requirement, and the Global Music History course fulfills It is almost easier to teach this topic in the sixteenth- and seventeenth cen-
“Global Studies” and area studies (African Studies and Asian Studies) require- turies than in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, as they know the European
ments under that broad heading. Ideologically, I’d say the Diversity, Equity, art music in the later periods. If I play a bunch of songs on the first day of class
and Inclusion (DEI) imperative, in North American terms, is more prominent and ask students if they know any of them, there will probably be one or two
institutionally and has a greater influence on the actual content and pedagogy students who love early music. So, the class is a kind of anthropological experi-
of courses. I’ve found the World History Center in the Department of History, ence for students and a liberating experience for me.
the Center for African Studies, and the Global Study Center most supportive
of my efforts to develop the global music history part of our curriculum, and OB: I should add that, at least in my view, Bonnie’s work on music cultures in
I’ve especially appreciated the ongoing pedagogy series at the World History coastal Virginia has been transatlantic (or maybe “hemispheric”) for quite a
Center. while, and I like that her work integrates an awareness of trans-border realities
like chattel slavery that shaped Virginian settlers’ musicking and listening (as
HL: Bonnie, can you say something about your course on global music history? in her essay on “What Mr. Jefferson Didn’t Hear”).1 This awareness challenges
hegemonic historical narratives of Virginia and its music and culture, whether
Bonnie Gordon: My class is called Early Modern Music. I teach this class in the it is labeled “global” or not.
music-major history sequence. It is a music-major class, but there are always a But building on her point, there is a way that attaching the label “global”
few non-music majors in a class of thirty. My university is a liberal arts school. to our curriculum or pedagogy can sometimes be a barrier. Especially if we’re
We have some major requirements and almost no curricular mandates. 98% of teaching American students who haven’t spent much time away from home
students are double majors. This year, my class was surprisingly racially diverse. or developed other interests, it can be hard for them to recognize this way
I have always been able to teach a version of what I want to teach, and this of approaching music history as relevant to them. The same may be true for
class aims to teach students how to think about the sixteenth and seventeenth teaching conservatory or western art music-focused performance students. So
centuries. Our music history sequence doesn’t have a history requirement or a maybe you teach it in a way that gets at the concept sideways, and sometimes
sequence requirement. Currently, I am the only one teaching anything before this approach can be more effective.
1890. So I teach students about a very long sixteenth century, from Columbus
to 1900. BG: I tend not to wear my pedagogy on my sleeve. With the undergraduates, I
Our university—the University of Virginia—is a public institution steeped would not call my teaching “global.” I also don’t call my approach “feminist,” but
in state history. The 1619 Project is located here, and kids learn the state his- as far as they are concerned, the seventeenth century was a hotbed of feminism.
tory in elementary school. In this context, my course starts with thinking about One thing I struggle with is the feeling that my classes become much too
a transnational Atlantic and Caribbean Virginia narrative that began with local, but the truth is—as witnessed by Trump and the like, unfortunately—for
Columbus, the sixteenth-century Spanish slave trade, and sound and moved us, everybody cares. When you talk about the founders, you are talking about
forward from there. Virginia. Our university still calls itself Thomas Jefferson University. The only
class where I explain politics in a very clear way is Feminist Theory.
HL: Do your students know they are learning “global music history”? Do you
use the word “global”? OB: The situation Bonnie describes is similar, although in western Pennsylvania
the nationalist legacy differs from the one in Virginia. That founding project
BG: The class is not called “global music history,” but I think they would assume
1. Bonnie Gordon, “What Mr. Jefferson Didn’t Hear,” in Rethinking Difference in Music
that it is. Students use the word “global” a lot. I feel like the “global” was fashion-
Scholarship, ed. Olivia Ashley Bloechl, Melanie Diane Lowe, Jeffrey Kallberg (Cambridge:
able a few years ago. If you think about the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Cambridge University Press, 2015), 108–132.
didn’t start in Pittsburgh, but we are also dealing with a nationalist—specifi- Part Two: On the Teaching of Global Music History
cally, a white settler nationalist—public historiography as an assumed shared
past that our students tend to bring to the classroom. Because this is a region HL: Which teaching activity/tool/assignment on global music history do you
with an eighteenth-century colonial history that’s really prominent publicly want to share with your readers? Is this teaching tool effective?
(especially with the remnants of Fort Pitt downtown), this legacy weighs on the
act of teaching this place’s music history globally or, more to the point of this OB: To answer this question, I put together a document (see Appendix 1) enti-
interview, teaching music history globally here. Speaking of positionality, I try tled “Focus on Instruments: The Transatlantic Violin.” It presents the bare bones
to frame the narrative—the one I teach in the global music history course and material for a unit assigned in my undergraduate global music history class.
in another course on local music history—as “global” to counter those nation- This course covers a wide chronological range, but in each of the period-based
alist takeovers of the history of sound and music and movement in this place. units I’ve included at least one class meeting focusing on particular instruments
(e.g., the oud, the banjo, the industrialized piano) and individuals.
DCP: If we think of pedagogy as not just about the undergraduate curriculum In this document, I’ve included primary sources illustrating the transatlan-
but about teaching-related activities outside the classroom, perhaps through tic travels of the violin and its adaptation and diffusion in eighteenth-century
community music making or graduate courses or other projects, would you North America. However, instead of prescribing what to do with these sources,
modify your positionality in this broadened sense of teaching? I decided to suggest some themes relevant to global music history, or teaching
world history with a music focus, that instructors can explore with them. Some
BG: For me, my graduate teaching is much more topical. Graduate teaching is of these themes are:
very much an extension of my research. In the last graduate seminar I taught, • Interconnection through long-distance trade in sound instruments/
I started with Toni Morrison looking at sound and literary observations of the music prints
Atlantic slave trade. • Gender and sexuality in colonial frontier societies
• Patronage and kin networks
OB: Last fall (2022), I taught the third graduate seminar I’ve done on global • Indigenization of foreign artistic culture
music historiography or related topics, which has been an essential part of what I’ll say a few things about these sources and how instructors can explore these
I try to bring to this Ph.D. program and something I think has succeeded so themes through them.
far. We have a lot of international students in our program across four areas: We know that imported violins were part of the European-style music
musicology, ethnomusicology, composition, and jazz studies. I notice that the collection kept by William Johnson, an Anglo-Irish immigrant and the first
global music historiography work tends to appeal especially to the international British Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and his partner Mary “Molly” Brant,
students and/or students of color, which makes sense. It has been an enjoyable a Mohawk leader and diplomat. They had a large household on the Mohawk
part of what I do and a way to serve and work with students across the program. River (in what’s now upstate New York), supervised by Molly and supported by
a cadre of indentured and enslaved workers. From a British perspective, Molly
BG: The University of Virginia has just started this pre-modern graduate pro- was William’s “housekeeper,” but they had many children together, and their
gram, and I am on its steering committee. We designed that program primarily relationship strengthened William’s position with Molly’s people (William was
to be global. We have medieval studies here. We do not have Renaissance stud- also adopted and given the Mohawk name Warraghiyagey). Molly’s eldest son
ies. So we started this program to push against the Eurocentric narratives—the with William was Peter Warren Johnson, who thus had ties to both Mohawk
Eurocentric Medieval, the Shakespeare-centric Renaissance, etc. Against these and Anglo-Irish networks.
Western European/German narratives, a graduate course covers the fifth to the In the 1770s, William seems to have been grooming Peter for a role in the
seventeenth century. At UVA, we are trying an approach that involves getting fur trade or in colonial administration. As part of his education, Peter was sent
the people in the room who do interesting pre-modern topics. People will speak to Montréal to pick up French and take dancing lessons. And in the second
to each other; it is a very cool program. Of course, none of us can admit many source I’ve suggested here (see Peter Warren Johnson to William Johnson,
graduate students. It would be great if some could join this program. Philadelphia, 18 November 1773, The Papers of Sir William Johnson, vol.
12:1042–1043), we learn that the teenaged Peter has just arrived in Philadelphia The teaching tool/activities that I want to bring to the table and which deal
to start his apprenticeship with a dry goods importer. with global music history in one way or another are two activities that have
This letter tells us that one of the first things he did was write to his father been very effective and which I enjoy teaching.
asking him to let Francis Wade—a Philadelphia merchant and a client of his The first one is an activity with which I often start my course and uses
father—buy him a “fiddle,” because he loved playing theirs at home. William Columbus’s third voyage as a departure point. During this voyage, he came
probably got their home violin from London, and we know he and Molly upon indigenous communities. He decided to play for them, hoping they would
owned some English music prints. For example, the first source listed in the receive him euphorically, and much to his chagrin, they shot arrows at him
document (Amaryllis) was a collection of songs for amateurs in a typically instead. I start with this because it is such a complete communication misfire
flexible European instrumentation, with upper parts for a recorder, flute, oboe, combined with the hegemony of the explorer. My students are stunned every
violin, and/or a singer and figured bass accompaniment. William had this col- time. They were surprised by the famous Columbus letter circulated in various
lection imported in 1750, which tells us that Peter would have grown up with forms. Some beautiful library exhibits show all the forms, including the Italian
this music. This source is also widely available for teachers in a reprint from song. An instructor can show the global traffic of a document, along with this
the 1960s or through archive.org and can be used as a musical example that precise moment of a figure such as Columbus, who, at least in Virginia, is very
could tie together multiple themes. I also included as a third source a reply familiar to students.
from Francis Wade (13 December 1773, The Papers of Sir William Johnson, vol. This past year, I asked students to write emails to the Pope and the King
8:946–948), where he eases William’s anxieties about Peter potentially spending and the Queen as if they were Columbus themselves. I assigned this because I
too much time playing music and not attending to his responsibilities. wanted something more fun, inspired by the success of other teachers who have
This brings me to another aspect I would like to explore more with my stu- used early modern memes in their classes or prompted students to “tweet” in
dents the next time I teach this class, which is the indigenization of European Latin.
instruments in North America. There is ample and firm evidence to develop The second activity with which I often start my class is Monteverdi’s Zefiro
this theme. One could, for example, teach the rise of Eastern Woodlands fid- torna because, on the one hand, there are so many good recordings of it, and
dle traditions from the colonial era onward, or the Indigenous manufacture of it is a text that everyone knows, and on the other, it relates to the ciaccona.
these instruments from at least the early nineteenth century. This last one allows us to think about the prescriptions against Spanish music,
Finally, the fourth source is a portrait of Peter Warren Johnson in a British which then became prescriptions against Moorish music. I pursue this route
military uniform. Peter tragically died in the Revolutionary War fighting on the as I have been thinking of ways to teach my students how to hear this music in
British side, though the precise date of his death is uncertain. Instructors can otherization practices. Most of my students had been exposed from an early age
use this source to explore the Revolutionary War as a transnational event, as to a certain sound that signaled the ethnic other (e.g., syncopation, open 4ths,
many Loyalists fled to Canada and Britain. Not only were Molly, William, and etc.). Of course, the ciaccona is not that, but the idea is that there was an idea
their children Loyalists, but many other Mohawks were too. of a specific sound that one can tell is supposedly “other” and which worried
the colonial authorities. So I ask them: “Is this sound really what they worried
BG: I love this teaching document because it tells a story. The problem with would ‘make the dead nuns wake up?’”
teaching global music history, particularly when teaching events before 1900,
is to have “the stuff.” As an instructor, you can have all these ideas you want to Part Three: On the Challenges to the Teaching of Global Music History
explore in class. Still, you also need to have something the students can read,
something they can listen to, and preferably a modern edition. If the edition is HL: What challenges have you encountered while teaching global music history?
not in English—which most of them are not—then you also need to provide an
excellent translation. There is a gap between the fantasy of the class you want OB: As long as I frame the class meeting and assignments narrowly enough and
to teach and the class you end up teaching because you don’t always have all do not try to overdo them, classes can be successful. The most successful units I
the material you need. So, I think Olivia’s document is an excellent pedagogical have done with undergraduates in this course have focused on particular mate-
tool—not only a scholarly tool—because it is a story that contains a lot of sto- rial objects, especially musical instruments that have traveled. Individuals or
ries within it. groups whose lives cross significant borders can also neatly illustrate concepts I
try to teach, such as interconnection or networks. The undergraduate students OB: In response to Bonnie’s point about why things don’t work, I want to make
seem to grasp those concepts most readily when we discuss them in relation a point about the pragmatics of teaching political struggles in global music his-
to a discrete object or person. As an example, the most successful unit I teach tory. One of the challenges that I’m facing, that I think a lot of us in the U.S. are
every year has been the one on the historical transmission of the oud, because facing right now, is how to teach sound sources related to historical conflicts,
I tie it to interconnection. It is a clear example, and Rachel Beckles Willson’s like the Crusades or the Reconquista. In the past, I’ve assigned Ibn Jubayr’s
“Oud Migrations” website is a terrific resource.2 Students get it immediately. description of an Abbasid band escorting Crusaders to their execution in
In short, being able to tie a relatively complex historical concept to a concrete Alexandria, on the one hand, and Reconquista-themed songs in the Cantigas de
example works. Santa Maria, on the other, to try to contrast Muslim and Christian Andalusian
But here are the challenges. If I try to teach a case, not a concept, that perspectives. So, I am using these as different ways of telling the story of the
involves too many elements unfamiliar to students in that class, it is hard work Crusades and the waves of conquest in Andalusia. But my students have had a
for me as an instructor. Because it asks a lot of the students, who may not be hard time engaging multiple perspectives on these events. They tend to see it as
willing or able to go there. It often does not work because it takes so long to politically cut-and-dried.
get them conversant with the basic concepts, practices, processes, regions, lan- When we’ve discussed cantigas on Alfonso X’s conquests, for instance, that
guages, and music cultures. It is just too difficult. For me, building an adequate hasn’t always gone well. Sometimes the feeling in the room is, why are we even
knowledge and skill base is one of the fundamental challenges of teaching. talking about that perspective? The songs are just propaganda. At that point,
Teaching a global music history course means having these pragmatic limits, there is nothing else to say. But they don’t really know what to do with the band
not just on accessible teachable materials, as Bonnie pointed out, but on the in the Crusader execution story either, which is also triumphalist. The challenge
field of knowledge and experience that the students and I share. I find is trying to get them to engage more with the contingencies and trickiness
of these histories, and of these sources, in a way they may not be prepared to do.
BG: Yes. The challenge is just how much background you want to give them.
That is why I always feel like the more pulling up resources to build a solid BG: I think that’s right. I would say another challenge this year, and I suspect
community, the better it will be. I would say that the things I talked about have we will all be facing for the next few years in the post-pandemic stage, is that
worked pretty well. One of the things I have learned about teaching is that I can- students come with a lot fewer chops in every way. I am used to assuming that
not predict when something works and when it does not. Sometimes, I think an first year students do not know how to do a library search. But in the last couple
idea is clear and interesting, but I feel like I’m talking to a fish. But sometimes, of years juniors and seniors do not know either. The business of what we do in
the computer does not work, and I teach without it, and it turns out great. the classroom, at least for the immediate future, is a bit different.
I have two suggestions. First invite students to see the absurdity of the past; On the question about mandates, it is about diversity, equity, and inclu-
Columbus completely failing to understand his audience. It is an easy way to sion (DEI) mandates. They are usually about hiring, but there may be some
make students understand these complex concepts. Second, I would add that mandates to rethink curriculums around diversity. The music department is
those who are incorporating things for the first time should cut themselves often conditioned by the large ensembles—the orchestra, the choir, the march-
some slack. Sometimes, an activity does not work just because it does not work. ing band—as those ensembles encounter DEI mandates. They are changing
It is not about the material; it is not about what you did not know; it is just a the sounds that students experience. If students are coming in as performers,
weird blip. Or, sometimes, there is a lack of preparation. The first few years I even if they are not music majors or serious performers, the DEI mandates are
taught anything global, I did not realize what students did not know. changing the music they make to a more global sound.
Some interesting recordings sound like some Spanish early music people
playing with French jazz guys, which play up to the global music sound of it. DCP: I have heard in another interview that there is also a pushback, not only
It is the opposite of the example that we all use. I am taking these recordings from professors who teach instruments but also from instructors who are
that are out there. There are lots of good materials that are very easy to use in expected to teach the canon in certain classes.
teaching.
BG: Some music schools feel that their mandate is to teach technique and tra-
2. Rachel Beckles Willson, “Oudmigrations,” accessed August 12, 2023, https://oudmigra-
tions.com/. ditional repertoire and that exploring new sounds will get in the way of that
mission. Yes, I think it is going to be a long battle. There is also a pipeline issue • Also illustrates flexibility of amateur music prints in the 18th century,
because it is a question of what students come in wanting to do and the kinds as it is written for German flute, violin, or hautboy on the upper
of students we attract to playing instruments. part.
I am all for certain kinds of canons; I play them; I love them. The critiques • Peter Warren Johnson (1759–1777?) to Sir William Johnson (1715–1774),
come from all sides. Some complain that you are changing too much of the Philadelphia, 18 November 1773, The Papers of Sir William Johnson, vol.
canon; some ask why you kill the canon. I think it will take some time before 12:1042–1043
this tension works itself out. Global music history is a tiny part of the ecology. • Letter asking his father to allow his guardian Francis Wade to buy him
violin for use during his apprenticeship to a Philadelphia import
OB: One challenge for me in a liberal arts setting is that resistance or indiffer- merchant.
ence can come from places you might not expect, for reasons that aren’t nec- • Francis Wade to Sir William Johnson, 13 December 1773, The Papers of
essarily about West-centrism (or even the actual work we’re doing) but that Sir William Johnson, vol. 8:946–948
can have more to do with disciplinary territorialism, institutional histories, • Confirms that he has purchased the violin and answers WJ’s concerns
paranoia, etc. about Peter spending too much time playing music.
On the issue of students’ post-pandemic readiness for intellectual engage- • Portrait of Peter Warren Johnson (1759–1777?), copied in 1830 by James
ment, an approach I might try next time, having heard you talk about this prob- George Kingston for Robert J. Kerr, Baldwin Collection of Canadiana,
lem, is offering less variety in the global music history course and instead doing Toronto Public Library, Ontario, Canada
a set of longer focused units. That would reduce the amount of new material
and topics and let students expand out a bit. I could try that and see if it works Themes:
a bit better. • Interconnection through economic/trade networks: Colonial British
import of musical instruments, music prints from London, Dublin, and
BG: I think that makes sense because students are overwhelmed. Repetition is other Atlantic commercial ports
useful. • Overland trade in colonial America (here, from Philadelphia to points
west and north)
• Gender/sexual relations in colonial American life (e.g., Molly Brant and
APPENDIX 1: William Johnson, Peter Warren Johnson’s parents)
• Patronage and kin networks: William Johnson as Anglo-Irish Anglican
patron; Molly Brant as Mohawk diplomat
Focus on Instruments: The Transatlantic Violin • Indigenization: Rise of Eastern Woodlands Indigenous violin and fiddle
performance and manufacture in the 18th century
Resources:
• Amaryllis: Consisting of Such Songs as are Most Esteemed for Composition
and Delicacy, and Sung at the Publick Theatres or Gardens. London:
T[homas] J[effreys], and sold by Mr. Cooper, J. Wood and I. Tyther
[1747?]
• Owned by William Johnson and likely used by Peter Warren Johnson
and siblings in performance. A later edition is widely available in
reprint.
• Can select songs by Arne, contrafacts of Handel, etc.

JMHP Teaching Global Music History

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

JMHP Teaching Global Music History

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

JMHP Teaching Global Music History

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Introduction by the Guest Editors: Global Music

History in the Classroom: Reflections on Concepts and

Hyun Kyong Hannah Chang, Daniel F. Castro Pantoja, and Hedy

15. I have since adopted NYH’s suggestion.

Ubiratan D’Ambrosio, “In My Opinion: What is Ethnomathematics, and How

Week 11: Social Inequalities in the Culture Industry

Weeks 12–13: Final presentations

Nancy Yunhwa Rao

“The transformation of ‘archivistic’ activity is the point of

(3) Consider the Usage of the Object

ethnographic research.2 My mother converted to Orthodox Judaism when she

Day 4. West Africa—The aesthetics of performance Day 8. South India—Rhythmic organization

Day 15. Bali—Music, Theater, Dance, Storytelling • Colonialism

Topic 4: Layered Histories. Case Study 8: Bulgaria The Context

We are requesting $5,000 from Mijente to cover costs.

Bonnie Gordon and Olivia Bloechl

Part One: On Positioning Ourselves as Teachers of Global Music History

Olivia Bloechl: One way of answering the positionality question would be to

You might also like