Friday, October 11

Morning Sessions:  7:45 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. ET

Evening Sessions:  3:30 - 8:00 p.m. ET 

Virtual - Zoom

Register below.

One of the challenges of working within global music history is to produce a grammar of decoloniality: a system of discourse that pushes and extends epistemological boundaries while remaining accessible to diverse constituencies of listeners or readers. Scholar-activists often find themselves developing a range of rhetorical styles to suit different audiences and different contexts. Of course, it is well known to musicologists that discussions of music history in the public sphere are often at risk of descending into clichés and even perpetuating myths. How can global music historians take account of existing narratives and seek to present new horizons of knowledge? How can discussions of music history in the public sphere be de-centered? Are works in global music history intrinsically decolonial, and what does this framework offer regarding the creation of new discourses or epistemologies? In this Study Day, co-sponsored by the IMS Global Music History and the University of Pittsburgh Library System, students, researchers, and scholars from diverse disciplines discuss the implications, advantages, limitations and imbalances that arise from the application of a decolonial framework for the study of global music history.

Summarized program:

Morning

7:45 - 8:00 a.m. ET: Introductory Remarks

• David R. M. Irving (ICREA & IMF, CSIC), Chair of IMS Study Group “Global History of Music”

• Miranda B. T. Sousa (University of Pittsburgh), Organizer of Study Day

8:00 - 10:00 a.m. ET:  Session 1, Decoloniality and the Voice, Chair: Maria Alexandra Chua (University of Santo Tomas)

• Erin Johnson-Williams (University of Southampton), “Singing (through) Scorched Earth: Decolonising Histories of Settler Colonialism”
• Devon J. Borowski (University of Chicago), “Voices from the East and the South: Border Singing in Regency Britain”
• Tom Peterson (SOAS, University of London), “Histories of Song, Histories of Music: Re-reading the Songs of the Nevill Collection in Support of a Postcolonial Global Musicology”
• Caio Felipe G. Mourão (INET-md/Universidade Nova de Lisboa/FCT) , “‘Pobre Povo Pequenino’: The counter-colonizing suffering of Portuguese Fado Bicha”

10:00 - 11 :00 a.m. ET:  Session 2, Panel Discussion 1, Opportunities and Challenges in Decolonizing Music Libraries

• Moderator: Christopher Lynch (University of Pittsburgh Library System)

• Speakers: Elizabeth Berndt (New York University), Stephanie Bonjak (University of Colorado Boulder), Laikin Dantchenko (Indiana University Bloomington), Julius Tanner (New York Public Library for the Performing Arts)

11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. ET:  Session 2, Panel Discussion 2 The Oxford Handbook of Global Music History: Editors’ Project Report and Discussion

• Speakers: Jessica Bissett Perea (University of Washington), Olivia Bloechl (University of Pittsburgh), Hedy Law (University of British Columbia), Juliana Pistorius (University College London and the University of the Witwatersrand)

Evening 

3:30 – 5:30 p.m. ET:  Session 3, Decolonizing Archives, Methods, and Practices, Chair: Jacob Olley (University of Cambridge)

• Hannah Krall (Shaw University), “Creolization, Créolisation, and Globalization: Examining the Buzzword “Creolized” in Black Music”
• Margaret Walker (Queen’s University), “Anticolonial Teaching and Undergraduate Global Music History: Questions and Strategies”
• Brian Fairley (University of Pittsburgh), “Notes toward a Decolonial Critique of Polyphony”
• Sisa Calapi (University Paris Nanterre / The Royal Museum for Central Africa), “Be-MUSIC - Online sound archives and the challenges of managing intellectual property rights”

6:00 - 8:00 p.m. ET:  Session 4, Contact, Conflict, Resistance, Chair: Miranda B. T. Sousa (University of Pittsburgh)

• Mohan Xie (University of Edinburgh), “Decolonising Jazz: The Intersection of Identity, Sexuality, and Heritage in Coco Zhao's Shanghai Jazz”
• Damjan Rakonjac (University of Houston), “Testing the Surface Tension of the Mission civilisatrice: Decentering Franco-Vietnamese Music Histories”
• David Chu (University of Western Ontario), “‘Never Again the A-Bomb’: the Cold War Voyages of an Antinuclear Anthem”
• Laura Case (University of Sydney) and Amanda Harris (University of Sydney) , “Local Resilience and Survival as Decolonising Global Music History”

Registration