Global music history counters the coloniality of Western music history and works towards the decolonization of music higher education. This essay argues that big decolonial narratives are crucial in global music history, presenting and elaborating on five such narratives that together constitute a substantive 6000-word skeleton of global music history since 4000 BCE. To critique the tendency towards little narratives in recent music studies as an inadvertent obfuscation of the big story of colonial history, I present a synthesized, decolonial account of the full historical and geographic spans of global music history. In this article, I define decolonization as the targeted dismantling and at least partial retreat of cultural coloniality as embodied in Western music history, as well as, crucially, the accompanying “return” of Indigenous and other BIPOC musics to various ethnic groups. Decolonization of music curricula is critical because, as Dylan Robinson argues, “[w]ithin all academic disciplines, the core curriculum serves as the epistemological foundation—the ground that we provide through the courses, the texts, and the performances we teach . . . [I]n order for decolonization not to merely be a metaphor, curriculum might need to be one of the things ‘given back.’”¹ While Western universities are colonial institutions that require multi-pronged approaches to decolonization² (see Introduction to this special issue), global music history is one concrete approach that can address the problems of offering exclusively Western music history in music higher education. This is the case even as global music history, like all ethical approaches, rightfully undergoes close scrutiny in order to identify its limitations (such as the potential disconnect with social justice for marginalized peoples³), because, as Robinson argues, the ceding of epistemic grounds 3is a concrete decolonial action.

Recent discussions of appropriate and inappropriate uses of the term “decolonial” have emphasized the centrality of Indigenous voices, and thus the viewpoints in Eve Tuck’s article “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor” (coauthored with K. Wayne Yang) should be given full consideration in settler colonial contexts.⁴ Certainly, “decolonization” can and has been misused. Student-centering pedagogies, for example, are important but not necessarily decolonial. However, what is less often appreciated is that replacing “decolonial” with “decentering”⁵ can distract from the colonialism of Western music history. In fact, the lack of specificity in “decentering” is precisely what I would refer to as a “move to innocence,” to borrow Tuck and Yang’s term (following Malwhinney⁶), indicating vagueness about what precisely is being resisted (decentering 6what exactly?). As opposed to only criticizing the misuse of the term “decolonial,” however justified it may be, those who restrict the use of “decolonial” to refer to the return of land in settler colonial contexts should always engage in a fuller discussion of universities’ and academic societies’ colonialism. Furthermore, a map for how to decolonize should always be provided; otherwise, universities and academic societies are simply allowed to maintain the colonial status quo. Granted, the depth and complexity of universities’ and academic societies’ colonialism means that any decolonial action taken is always partial, inadequate, and entangled with their colonial legacy. However, the alternative is to just maintain the colonial status quo, as opposed to the entanglement of decolonial attempts with the colonial legacy.

Calling global music history’s countering of Western music history “decentering” misses the point that Western music history is a specificallycolonial cultural form. Cultivated by Western universities and academic societies, Western music history propagates the expansionist imperial ideology of Western superiority and is projected globally. Without a doubt, the decolonial function of global music history is limited to only colonial music curricula, leaving myriad other issues in universities and academic societies for further action, especially their occupation of Indigenous lands. However, focusing exclusively on the incompleteness of countercolonial actions such as global music history, and restricting the conversation to land only, results in the reduction of multiple colonialisms into settler colonialism (in the Americas and Australasia), thereby erasing other (Asian, African) geographies and colonialisms from the conversation.⁷ Western universities and academic societies occupy Indigenous lands, 7and also propagate colonial forms such as Western music history that projects purported Western superiority, which is the core justification for expansionist imperialism in Asia and Africa. The colonialism of Western music history is seen in the offering of exclusively Western music history courses in Singapore (where I received my early music education) well into the early twenty-first century, even though the British left in 1959, and in the rising gap in contemporary China (where I now work) between growing numbers of Western-music students and falling numbers of Chinese-music students. Against the expansionist imperial ideology of Western superiority as embodied in Western music history, the teaching of global (including Asian, African, and Afro Asian) music history is a decolonial act. Calling the function of global music history “decentering” leaves Western music history unaccountable for the part it plays in colonialism. To be clear, cultural and epistemic colonization—how “subjects that are socially located in the oppressed side of the colonial difference [are made] to think epistemically like the ones on the dominant positions”⁸—8is colonization.

To counter the imperial aspect of Western music history by targeting the way in which it has excluded other histories (rather than targeting Western music history per se in its totality, which is one among many histories that should be studied), this article and the accompanying syllabus frame global music history in five decolonial narratives. From a pedagogical perspective, big narratives may seem to be nothing more than the kind of over-generalizations we regularly observe in student essays. Most of us try to cultivate students’ argumentative ability by guiding them towards the specificity of case studies, readings, and primary materials. I am in agreement with the need for methodology to lean towards the specific, but I also hold the position that there is a distinction to be made between valid and invalid generalities. Spatial, temporal, and social generalities, from the dominance of European coloniality over the past five centuries to the global impact of climate change and the universal need for anti-racist action, are valid generalities that can be harnessed for counterhegemonic purposeswhen combined with specific case studies. In music, this could mean studies of how Western music altered the soundscape of nineteenth-century Japan, or the disappearance of Indigenous American musics such as the Arapaho Ghost Dance song, or the policy of dispersal that made it impossible for African musics to be preserved after their transatlantic journey to the United States. It is through big narratives that students can fully comprehend Western music as an instrument of colonialism and also see a global past that extends beyond—while sometimes being entangled with—the West. Global music history gives students the tools to create their own decolonial projects that dismantle exclusively Western music history courses by amplifying music histories that have previously been invisible.

Part 1: Rethinking Big Narratives

While teachers in different parts of the world have long taught the histories of their own musics (e.g., Chinese music history), global music history as an area of research first appeared in Western musicology only in the 2010s,⁹ with the majority of publications taking a case-studies approach based on in-depth analyses of how particular global points are connected, say 9China and the West.¹⁰ (The field of ethnomusicology delves deeply into global musics but remains anchored in the anthropological method that leans towards the contemporary moment, in spite of the emergence of “historical ethnomusicology.”¹¹) Even now, only a handful of higher education institutions offer global music history courses, and there is wide variance in the approaches adopted. These courses may be organized around historical patterns (diaspora and migration), cultural concepts (transculturation and hybridity due to cultural mixing), era (the past five centuries as a period of global integration), or specific case studies. A novice to the field of global music history might understandably be confused at this point due to the lack of overarching narratives.

In working on global music history narratives, we do not need to start entirely from scratch because there are relevant methodological issues which have been dealt with in Western music historiography. Broadly interpreted, “narratives” encompass all kinds of constructs, from (genius/gendered) images of canonic composers to development of styles and chronologically arrayed, stylistically defined historical periods.¹² Indeed, composers, styles, periods, and gender are key components of the stories we tell in music history, akin to the characters and plot development in a play. While narratives, especially big narratives, seem old fashioned for musicological research and teaching today, the critical power of what Jean-François Lyotard called myriad “little narratives”¹³ derives in part from their opposition to “big” narratives. The critical interventions of little narratives would not seem so critical if the original big narratives had not existed. Calling for the inclusion of Maria Theresia Ahlefeldt and Afro-French composer Joseph Boulogne alongside Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven would not have as much of an impact if the construction of the First Viennese School was not already firmly entrenched. The critique of heights of development (e.g., Palestrina as the epitome of Renaissance polyphony) or genius constructs would not have been possible if these narrative components were not already well established.

In its current state, global music history research and teaching operate largely without macro narratives: in research, detailed studies of specific global connections are based on rigorous primary research dealing with music, texts, and archives (for example, recent research in East Asia is based on close examination of East Asian and European primary materials¹⁴); in teaching, macro narratives (as opposed to case studies) reaching beyond the past five centuries are uncommon. Indeed, global music history generally avoids the big narratives that were deemed necessary in the so-called world or universal histories that went out of fashion beginning in the late 1980s.¹⁵ While a universal world history of music (were such a thing possible or desirable) would start from “prehistory” and work its way through all regions of the globe up to the present day, global music history—allied with the field of global history—draws on empirically grounded, delimited narratives and diametrically opposes the universal narrative of world history.¹⁶ Global history emerged from studies of post-World War II globalization, which were based on the principle of global 16integration (as seen in instant email communication, brief flights connecting the globe, and global financial disasters, for example). To study large-scale patterns (such as trade and conquest), the principle was then in turn applied to the entire span of history—but, significantly, global integration did not aim to cover all history.¹⁷ In what follows, I discuss the limitations of global music history as it has been practiced in relation to its key tenets of empirical “researchability,”¹⁸ global integration, and little narratives.

First, while I agree with the empirical tenet of global music history, “researchability” suggests that global history focus on topics in which primary materials are more readily available. In music studies, this precept may lead to the neglect of cultures without a strong tradition of written records, or for which musical artefacts are scarce (e.g., cultures with aristocratic classes tend to leave behind instruments as artefacts, while hunter-gatherer societies tend to make vocal music). What this implies is that a broader conception of appropriate historical method may be required to provide a balanced account of global music history. For example, comparative studies of living oral musical traditions, or comparative study of the etymology of instrument names in various geographies, hold much potential for illuminating continuities and discontinuities across time.¹⁹ Could we expand the range of acceptable primary materials in historical research from texts and artefacts to living sounds, instrument names, and orally transmitted historical narratives? Could we expand the range of acceptable historical argumentation from firmly empirically anchored ones to more speculative reasoning? While this essay does not propose to definitively answer these questions, I will note that major aspects of music history before 1500 will have to be excluded if we use the stricter delineation of global historical method. For instance, Arabic-Persian musical influence in Europe and India during the Islamic Golden Age (eighth to fourteenth centuries CE) would likely be de-emphasized.

As with the emphasis on empirical researchability, another form of unintended exclusion arises if there is a laser focus on global integration, as “local” threads of music history that developed within milieus of relative isolation would be neglected: e.g., Chinese music history during the Shang (1600–1046 BCE) and Zhou dynasties (1046–221 BCE), which predated the Silk Road. Such a “rule” limiting the purview of music history to the strictly “global” may unwittingly become exclusionary and may actually refocus our attention on the most recent period of global integration—ironically that of European colonization and imperialism since 1500 CE. It is of course not the case that all roads lead to the West, but much of global music history research has followed that route.²⁰ The fundamental problem is the epistemic fracture that occurs when musicology, already lagging behind, absorbs new methodological approaches from other disciplines (in this case, global history).

In global history, an emphasis on interconnections is the logical outgrowth from previous work on national histories and world history. National histories are arguably the natural starting points for historical research, given the relative difficulty of delving simultaneously into multiple geographies and languages; world history builds on national histories by integrating them into larger narratives (e.g., through loose periodization), and a global, truly interconnected history can be seen as the latest development in that trajectory.Music history, however, did not go through the period of “world” history focusing on an array of more or less independent geographies, with world music courses in general adopting the anthropological emphasis on more or less recent cultures. Instead, global music history appeared immediately on the scene—in medias res, if you will—like a novel or sonata seemingly beginning in the middle of things without the primary characters or themes, plots or structures having been articulated. As a result, the relatively independent phases of national music histories become worthless to the new global music history. This is a rather harsh way to approach varied geographies, as an epistemic callus heals over the methodological fracture caused by global music history. Without a more nuanced view of global historiography, the European and North American conception of global history and global music history seems to be proceeding with Western-defined ethical precepts that present a favorable mirror image of the West to itself (deconstructing the West through global circulations) while discrediting histories elsewhere unless they are of “global” value.

Finally, if global music history is constructed primarily out of little narratives, we lose opportunities to craft macro decolonial narratives. At the moment, most research in global music history is still of a far smaller scale than its manifestation in a book like Peter Frankopan’sThe Silk Roads, ²¹which examines interactions across Eurasia that undermine a dichotomous understanding of East and West.²² My basic premise in this essay is that macro decolonial narratives in global music history are 22essential to the project of decentering Western music. Of course, like all big narratives, decolonial narratives are subject to refinement and refutation, and they are undeniably anchored in a particular point of view. Macro decolonial narratives may be just as crude as Marxist narratives, for example, such as the opposition between socialism and capitalism in Naomi Klein’s critique of US-led, pro-capitalist global military interventions.²³ Yet the finesse shown in the eschewing of macro narratives could also be due to a failure of nerve in the wake of Lyotard’s critique of universal narratives. Indeed, Lyotard’s promotion of little narratives in 1979 was widely celebrated in intellectual circles, and it could be argued that his immense influence can be seen at least indirectly in the pivotal position of the concept of 23difference in ethnic, women’s, and queer studies; in music studies, this involved articulating how women and BIPOC composers were marginalized in the universal narrative of a string of white male genius composers through time. Only recently has this influential configuration of universality as oppressive and particularity as resistive been reconsidered. Thinkers in music and beyond have pointed out that capitalism, coloniality, and the Anthropocene²⁴ are indeed universal constructs. But if we are unable to name these universals, how can we recognize such oppressive and/or destructive forces and envision effective counterstrategies on what must necessarily be a global scale?24

To that point, however refined feminist, queer, critical race, decolonial, and disability theory may be, they are all in large part based on a particular macro narrative widely accepted in academia: the hegemonic majority oppresses the minority; members of the minority exercise their agency to resist the majority. When cast in such simplistic terms, these narratives may seem crude, but they are the foundation on which much scholarship is built in contemporary musicology. I would posit “Western music history is only one thread in global music history” as the foundational big narrative in global music history.²⁵ To clarify, if we articulate macro narratives which position Western music 25within global history, global music history research and teaching can play their parts in decentering Western music. This is a critical task because music history until very recently has usually meant Western music history in European/US research and teaching, with global musics taught through the lens of social function in so-called World Music courses. Decolonial narratives in global music history “provincialize” Western music, which can then be reduced to its appropriate position alongside global musics.²⁶

In the next section, I elaborate on the decolonial narratives that constitute the structure of my global music history course (syllabus below), which I have taught as an undergraduate elective. I currently teach this in a school of music in China to undergraduate students majoring in Western instrumental performance who are required to take three semesters of Western music history survey and two semesters of Chinese music history survey. As a Chinese Singaporean who studied in the United Kingdom and the United States and now works in China, and who is an outsider in many ways to both Western and mainland Chinese cultures, I retain a critical distance to the teaching of both Western and Chinese music histories. For both the students and myself, global music history is an important means of thinking beyond both Eurocentric and Sinocentric terms. I hope to eventually persuade my school of music to integrate my global music history course—the syllabus of which is found in Appendix 1—as the first course in the Western music history survey, reimagined as global in coverage, even as the courses contain content designed to equip students with the knowledge needed to help them understand their Western instruments and repertoires. Appendix 2 shows a selection of global topics (mainly drawn from Appendix 1), organized in the conventional chronological order of Western music history.

The decolonial narratives I articulate below cover most of recorded history from 4000 BCE to the present. These narratives are crafted with the single aim of countering the conventional trajectory of Western music history from ancient Greece to medieval Europe and the familiar stylistically defined eras that follow. Each of the five headings below correspond to one narrative, which is fleshed out in the corresponding section. What I offer is a representative as opposed to comprehensive view of the music relevant to each heading/narrative. Each narrative is elaborated with a selection of case studies, which, as a whole, cover all macro geographic areas and historical periods. The five decolonial narratives (DN) correspond to the five parts in my global music history course. The narratives are: (DN1) Multiple antiquities existed before 500 CE; (DN2) Arabic and Persian music spread globally during the Islamic Golden Age (eighth to fourteenth centuries CE) and European Medieval period (sixth to fifteenth centuries CE); (DN3) European settler colonizers suppressed Indigenous and African musics (1500ff.); (DN4) Western music spread globally due to European colonization (1500ff.); and, (DN5) There are music histories elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia-Pacific regions. Discussion of how I partition global music history by periods and geographies is intertwined with the narratives. Narratives 1–4 are focused on different geographies, but they fit within a single tripartite chronological time line (before 500 CE, 500–1500 CE, 1500 CE ff.) because these periods coincide with the heights of one or another of the ancient Roman, Arabic, or multiple post-1500 European empires. Narrative 5 is focused on the huge regions of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia-Pacific with relatively independent music histories from the former regions, at least before the Age of Imperialism. Under narrative 3, I discuss the importance of naming colonial oppressions, which are often erased. Across all the narratives, cases of global musical flow are not one-directional and always involve movement to and from the center to the periphery of empires.

While the five decolonial narratives appear roughly in chronological order, what they express aremultiple temporalities²⁷ rather than a unilinear timeline (see figure 1). DN1 appears to predate DN2 but is actually best represented as two or perhaps even three independent timelines for the three case studies of ancient China, Egypt, and Greece, since this was a period before extensive contact between China and the other two cultures (of course, ancient Greece conquered Egypt). DN2 does not actually precede DN3 and DN4, because of geographic discrepancies, with DN2 anchored around the Mediterranean Sea, DN3 the Americas, and DN4 the entire globe. DN3 and DN4 occupy the same temporal period, but there is a positional discrepancy in that the former is focused on Indigenous and Black musics under settler colonization, while DN4 tracks Western musics which were disseminated globally. DN5 geographically overlaps with DN4 but is focused on the portion of music history that is less entangled with Western musics. It may be helpful to think of the convergence of multiple geographies in each DN (due to colonization, capitalism, and cultural exchange) as exceptions to otherwise independent “times that emerge through the activity of people.”²⁸

It bears remarking that what I offer here is one of the first cohesive views of the histories of all musics since 4000 BCE. Whereas universal accounts of general history are commonly available in the form of textbooks, this is not the case for the new field of global music history, for which only Mark Hijleh’sTowards a Global Music History has attempted a full synthesis of global musical interactions across all known history and geography. My account of global music history differs from Hijleh’s in that my focus is squarely on decolonial narratives, as opposed to the more neutral and possibly colonial point of view, which led Hijleh to focus on Arab-European “intercultural convergence” on the Iberian Peninsula during the Islamic Golden Age rather than on Baghdad, Mecca, Medina, and Damascus and the radiating outwards of Arabic music towards East and South Asia (Hijleh’s other two convergences were the Silk Road and European colonization).²⁹ Nevertheless, Hijleh offers a global point of view and a synthesis not found in other music textbooks and reference books, in which historical information on various musics is typically split into sections dedicated to various geographies. To my knowledge, other researchers have not, in published writing, synthesized historical knowledge of various musical geographies into a single coherent framework.³⁰

Part 2: Decolonial Narratives

Decolonial Narrative 1: Multiple Antiquities Existed Before 500 CE

This narrative makes it clear that there were multiple antiquities alongside ancient Greece and Rome. Materials for music in ancient Egypt and China are more readily available, but there are in fact multiple civilizations, including those in Africa, whose music can be traced back to before 500 CE. From 4000 BCE to 500 CE, the security of food supply due to agriculture led to changes in human society, giving rise to social complexity and the emergence of ancient civilizations. These civilizations left behind texts (song lyrics, treatises), instruments (some of which have been recreated), and images of music making (e.g., pottery) that provide a basis on which to reconstruct music in ancient times. Three examples of global antiquities are: love songs in ancient Egypt (with a music history traced to before 3000 BCE); the ritual instrument bianzhong in ancient China (3000 BCE ff.), and tragic drama in ancient Greece (eighth century BCE ff.). These examples demonstrate how any of the decolonial narratives can be transmitted in research and teaching using just a few case studies, without having to cover the entire range of global music history referenced by a particular narrative.

Ancient Egypt.Among ancient Egyptian manuscripts, love songs could be found only from the Ramesside dynasty (ca. eleventh century BCE). These songs were created and sung in palaces. The lyrics of one such love song, “The Great Leisure,” have been preserved on papyrus. Its music has recently been recreated, as was the accompanying instrument, the two-string dancer’s lute.Ancient Egypt. Among ancient Egyptian manuscripts, love songs could be found only from the Ramesside dynasty (ca. eleventh century BCE). These songs were created and sung in palaces. The lyrics of one such love song, “The Great Leisure,” have been preserved on papyrus. Its music has recently been recreated, as was the accompanying instrument, the two-string dancer’s lute.³¹

Ancient China.Thebianzhongset of bells, hung on an L-shaped rack and used in state rituals, is the most prominent instrument from ancient China. Interred in 433 BCE, thebianzhongfrom the tomb of Marquis Yi of the Zeng kingdom (Zeng Hou Yi) is the most important specimen of this instrument. It carries inscriptions which detail the music theory systems (e.g., pitch names) of Zeng and its neighboring kingdoms, showing regional variation at a time before the unification achieved in the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE), which ruled over all Chinese territories.Ancient China. The bianzhong set of bells, hung on an L-shaped rack and used in state rituals, is the most prominent instrument from ancient China. Interred in 433 BCE, the bianzhong from the tomb of Marquis Yi of the Zeng kingdom (Zeng Hou Yi) is the most important specimen of this instrument. It carries inscriptions which detail the music theory systems (e.g., pitch names) of Zeng and its neighboring kingdoms, showing regional variation at a time before the unification achieved in the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE), which ruled over all Chinese territories.

Ancient Greece.Performed at most public occasions in ancient Greece, nearly all poetry and drama was sung or accompanied by music. Among the fifty-odd surviving score fragments is the tragedian Euripides’s Stasimon, or “ode,” chorus fromOrestes(408 BCE). The score is partially preserved on papyrus, and contemporary performances fill in the parts missing from the left and right edges of the page. Like other poets, Euripedes was probably also the composer of the music in his dramas. One of the instruments that accompanied singing was theaulosdouble clarinet, also found in ancient Egypt after it was conquered by Greece in 332 BCE.Ancient Greece. Performed at most public occasions in ancient Greece, nearly all poetry and drama was sung or accompanied by music. Among the fifty-odd surviving score fragments is the tragedian Euripides’s Stasimon, or “ode,” chorus from Orestes (408 BCE). The score is partially preserved on papyrus, and contemporary performances fill in the parts missing from the left and right edges of the page. Like other poets, Euripedes was probably also the composer of the music in his dramas. One of the instruments that accompanied singing was the aulos double clarinet, also found in ancient Egypt after it was conquered by Greece in 332 BCE.

Collectively, these three case studies make the point that there were multiple antiquities alongside ancient Greece.

Decolonial Narrative 2: Arabic and Persian Music Spread Globally During the Islamic Golden Age (Eighth–Fourteenth Century CE) and European Medieval Period (Sixth–Fifteenth Century CE)

The second narrative introduces the problem of periodization. Whereas the term “medieval” is sometimes applied to global cultures, this is not appropriate, as “medieval”—meaning “middle”—is most applicable to Europe in a time of relative cultural weakness, between the fall of the Roman empire (476 CE) and the beginning of the Renaissance (ca. 1400 CE). Rather than the European medieval period, my historical reference point for this second narrative is the approximately concurrent era of the Islamic Golden Age in the eighth to fourteenth centuries CE (roughly, the period of the Islamic Caliphates, 632–1517 CE), representing the first time in history that a particular music had worldwide influence because of the global integration brought about by war and trade. This influence precedes the ubiquity of Western music in the European colonial era. Through the Islamic empire’s conquests, Arabic and Persian music spread in all directions—west through North Africa all the way to Muslim Iberia or Al-Andalus (Southern Spain/Portugal); east to Central Asia and China; and southeast to India. In contrast to the global spread of Middle Eastern musical influences, European music was relatively insular and had little global influence during the medieval period. The global spread of Arabic and Persian music reveals that the later global dissemination of Western music was an effect of European colonialism, not an inevitability. Although there are elements in the history of Middle Eastern global musical influence that can be deduced from comparative study of musics rather than written records, it is reasonable to posit that Middle Eastern musics’ global influence began during the Islamic Golden Age. Global flows can be observed between the Islamic empire and the world, alongside comparative musical similarities. (Note the distinction between Arabic and Persian musics, though they share a musical system; “Arab world” encompasses Persia, which was conquered in the seventh century CE.)

During the Islamic Golden Age, the art music suite flowed from the Middle East via North Africa to Muslim Iberia then back to North Africa. The precursor to the Persian art music suitedastgāh could have been developed by poet, lutenist, composer, and music theorist Barbad around 700. Persian music greatly influenced Arabic music. Iraq is regarded as the place of origin of the Andalusian nawba, said to have been brought by poet, singer, oud player, composer, and teacher Ziryâb (d. 857) from Baghdad to southern Spain, from where it was brought to North Africa in the late fifteenth century by exiled Iberian Muslims. (As a whole, Islam influenced music in North Africa, while Christianity was later transmitted to the western, central, and southern African coasts during the European colonial era so that many African countries have a Muslim north and Christian south.) Middle Eastern influence on Indian musics is likely to have commenced during the Islamic Golden Age, and Persian language and musical terms were used during the Islamic Mughal period in India (1526–1857).

Due to the global flow of Arabic and Persian musics, there are striking similarities between the art musics of the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. Arabic and Persian (as well as Turkish) art musics are similar, and their influence can be felt in Indian musics and in Andalusian art music in North Africa. The two common features of all these musics are: (i) a similar concept of mode encompassing scale, conventional melodic patterns, and an associated feeling or emotion; and (ii) unmetered improvisation as well as metered, pre-composed passages. The term for mode ismaqām in Arabic music, makam in Turkish music, dastgāh in Persian music, rāga in Indian musics (divided into North and South, or Hindustani and Carnatic musics). The art music suite is found throughout the Arab world and is called dastgāh in Persia, fasil in Turkey, and nawba in Andalusian music in North African Muslim countries.

Arabic and Persian art musics are accompanied by bodies of music theory, in which musical flows from ancient Greece to the Islamic empire to medieval Europe can be discerned. In Arabic music theory, we can see the adaption of the Greek tetrachord. Greek scales are constructed with either conjunct or disjunct tetrachords; conjunct tetrachords (forming the Lesser Perfect System) share a common note, while disjunct tetrachords (forming the Greater Perfect System) are separated by a whole tone. In Arabic music, the lower tetrachord defines and is shared by all themaqāmāt in a maqāmāt group; the upper notes of the maqāmāt in the group vary. It is documented that Arabic music theory influenced Europeans: Al-Fārābī’s (d. 950) Classification of the Sciences, for instance, contained a section on music (a summary of his music-theoretical Great Book on Music or Kitāb al-mūsīqī al-kabīr), which was translated into Latin in Spain during the twelfth century and directly influenced the medieval music theorist Jerome of Moravia (d. after 1271, worked in Paris), among others. The influence of the Arab world on medieval Europe is further seen in the preservation and transmission of Greek writings before the Crusades, a time when Greek classics were unknown in Western Europe. Scholars of the Arab world translated Greek writings to Arabic, Persian, and Syriac and brought these works to Muslim Iberia and Sicily. Al-Fārābī, in particular, is credited with preserving Greek texts because of his commentaries and treatises.

Arabic influence on European medieval musical practice in some form is also probable. French troubadour poetry, for example, may have roots in the Arabic poetry of Muslim Iberia.³² Arabic influence is also suggested by the origins of the European rebec (precursor of the violin) in the Arabic 32rebab and bowed Byzantine lyra.³³ Arabic and Persian musics flowed eastwards as well. The Islamic empire was so extensive that, having incorporated Central Asia, it shared its eastern border with Xinjiang, which was controlled by China beginning in the Han dynasty (second century BCE–second century CE). From the Han dynasty onwards, instruments from the Middle East and Central and South Asia steadily spread to China via the Silk Road, including the Persian lute 33barbat, which became the famous Chinese pipa. The drums jie gu, dutan gu, and dala gu in China originated in India and Central Asia, and the double reeds bili and suona in Central Asia.

The flourishing of Arabic and Persian art musics is contrasted with considerable Islamic skepticism of religious music, and similar musical limitations can be found in the history of Judaism (before the eighteenth century) and Christianity (e.g., musical reforms of the Council of Trent, 1545–1563). Across many religions, chant traditions are found; three examples are Quran recitation (not considered to be music in Islam), Jewish prayer chants, and Gregorian chant. The comparative study of chants, alongside the global flow of Arabic and Persian musics, provides an alternative narrative of the 500–1500 CE period, one that decenters European music, which occupied a minor global position during that time.

Decolonial Narrative 3: European Settler Colonizers Suppressed Indigenous and African Musics (1500ff.)

From the sixteenth century onwards, the arrival of Europeans in the Americas and Australia led to systemic impacts that suppressed Indigenous peoples, cultures, and musics. The Aztec, Mayan, and Incan civilizations in the Americas were all but decimated and their musics survive only as remnants in rural areas. Similar patterns of European Christian missionary activity are discernable: the suppression of Indigenous musics and the musical re-education of Indigenous peoples in European chant, polyphony, and instruments by the Catholic Spanish in Latin America; and Protestant British influence (in North America and Australia) through hymns. More recently, country music, rock music, popular music, school songs, and avant-garde musical practices have been adapted and performed by Indigenous musicians.

Although Indigenous traditional musics have survived in various ways, and Indigenous peoples have continuously made music, including in Western art and popular styles, the catastrophic effects of cultural suppression cannot be denied. In past decades, many music researchers believed that emphasizing oppressed people’s agency amplified that agency, and that, by extension, emphasizing their oppression amplified that oppression. But decolonial theory poses new questions: Is the minimization of colonial history a form of erasure? And if so, whom does this erasure serve? The dated discourse of “Western impact,”³⁴ which seemed to minimize the musical creativity of musicians, was subsequently replaced with studies of “modernity,”³⁵ wherein musicians made sense of local and Western sounds in tandem. But the recent emergence of decolonial studies has brought about a renewed focus on naming the oppressions brought about by the continuing occupation of Indigenous lands in the Americas and Australia by settler colonizers.³⁶ It follows that music histories should be just as direct in articulating the bloody impact of colonization, even as the ubiquitous agency and creativity of Indigenous music-makers are recognized. Indeed, the history of settler colonization is seldom recounted in detail. For example, in a well-known textbook, the “North America/Native America” chapter contains detailed discussion of the social and sonic aspects of Indigenous American music, but the only reference to colonization is in a short paragraph on a song by the Navajo educator Ruth Roessel (1935–2012), which references the Navajos’ removal to a concentration camp in 1864.³⁷

Traditionally, Indigenous cultures and musics rely on oral transmission and are in that sense incongruent with historical research methods centered on archives and artifacts, though Indigenous musics were documented under European settler colonization. Many of the musical traditions that have been preserved likely predate colonization. Diverse traditional Indigenous musics (including those of the originally hundreds of Indigenous nations in the Americas, as well as Australia) share some common traits. Indigenous musics usually comprise songs, which may be accompanied by drums and a few other instruments. These songs are transmitted more or less intact, with little improvisation, and contain words as well as vocables (meaningless syllables). A comparable conception of music across Indigenous peoples seems particularly significant. Important in origin myths, music is thought to be received via dreams and visions and not necessarily as a product of human creativity. Traditionally, music is thoroughly integrated with social life, such that the concept of music may not even exist (e.g., among Arctic Inuits), or music is intertwined with other specialized social roles such as priest, shaman, medicine men, and tribal leader. Indeed, professional musicians do not traditionally exist among many Indigenous peoples. In recent centuries, however, European as well as African musics (due to the slave trade in the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries) have influenced Indigenous musics in the Americas. This was the result of Spanish conquests in Latin America and the establishment of British and French settlements in North America beginning in the sixteenth century, as well as the British colonization of Australasia beginning in the late eighteenth century.

In remote areas, such as Arnhem Land in Australia, traditional Indigenous ways of life and traditional music have been preserved. Elsewhere, colonization has left its indelible mark on Indigenous musics. In Mexico, for example, the history of the suppression of Indigenous musics greatly impacted the soundscape, such that even the Zapatista political movement (1994 ff.) that champions oppressed Mayans uses the European-influenced genre ofcorrido (traditional Mexican ballad) for its national anthem (“El Himno Zapatista”), rather than surviving remnants of Mayan music in the rural areas. In the United States, the gradual westward expansion of white settlement in the nineteenth century resulted in the breaking up of tribes and the removal of Indigenous peoples to reservations where food and shelter were inadequate. Settler colonial impact is clearly evinced in the Sioux flag song, for instance. While the flag song serves as the national anthem of the Sioux, its lyrics, which make mention of following the banner of the (US) “President’s flag,” complicate its status as a symbol of Indigenous identity. Another example of colonial impact is the songs of the short-lived Ghost Dance religion, which emerged in the 1880s as Indigenous resistance became unsustainable under the relentless onslaught of US forces. The medicine man Wovoka of the Paiute tribe (from Nevada Territory) had a vision in 1889 of an impending apocalypse that would destroy the world through natural disasters, the white man along with it. Stolen Indigenous lands would be returned, and the Indigenous dead would be resurrected. Ghost Dance religion taught that instead of fighting, believers should turn to song, dance, and prayer, which make them invulnerable to bullets. The Ghost Dance religion was crushed in 1890 when US forces massacred 150 Lakota people (one of the three subcultures of the Sioux), mostly women and children, effectively marking the end of Indigenous resistance against white settler colonization in the United States.

European settler colonists not only suppressed Indigenous American cultures, but also brought enslaved Africans to the Americas to labor under inhumane conditions. In Latin America, some musical traditions can be traced to distinct parts of Africa. In Brazil, the music of the Candomblé religion links directly to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century worship music among the Yoruba people of Nigeria and Benin. Umbanda religious ceremonial music (another Afro-Brazilian music) is related to traditional healing sessions still practiced in Angola. The voodoo music of Haiti and elsewhere in the Caribbean is linked to thevodun religious music of the Fon people in Benin. In the United States, the policy of dispersion meant that distinct African musical traditions could not be preserved, though instruments (drums and banjos) were reconstructed based on African originals. Distinct African American musical forms emerged, such as the field holler (which is considered to be a precursor of blues), spirituals, and gospel music.

A disgraceful episode in US music history is blackface minstrelsy (with music written by such celebrated American composers as Stephen Foster)—a form of entertainment, originating in the nineteenth century, in which white performers darkened their faces with burnt cork and presented derogatory black stereotypes. In the twentieth century, black music was perpetually appropriated by white musicians through repackaging (e.g., the originators of rock and roll in the US were black artists such as Little Richard and Chuck Berry).

Decolonial Narrative 4: Western Music Spread Globally Due to European Colonization (1500ff.)

During the Islamic Golden Age, Arabic music did spread far and wide, but its influence was limited to certain parts of Afro Eurasia, and the extent of this influence varied from region to region. The first truly globally integrated age of music was the era of European colonization (continuing to the present in the settler colonies of the Americas and Australasia), when virtually the entire globe was colonized, and even countries that remained independent were indelibly changed by colonial contact. Over the course of five centuries, Western art and popular musics spread all over a globe now integrated by colonial military power that facilitated trade and migration, connecting Europe and later the United States to all global regions. Before World War II, global trade primarily benefitted the European/US governments and corporations who “owned” the means of production—i.e., colonized lands, enslaved peoples, profits accrued from plantations and other colonial industries, etc. The influence of Western music is particularly salient in the global transmission of Western tonality, the result of which is the emergence of myriad hybridized art and popular musical genres worldwide.³⁸

Settler Colonies.The global impact of European musical influence was the greatest in settler colonies. The earliest influence was enabled by sixteenth-century Spanish conquests in Mexico, which, as mentioned earlier, led to the introduction of chants, polyphony, and European instruments. Spanish arrivals such as Hernando Franco (1532–1585) brought the style of sixteenth-century sacred polyphony to Mexico. In the seventeenth century, psalms and hymn singing were introduced and became widespread throughout the Protestant United States. From the eighteenth century onwards, music for theater became popular across the Americas: Spanish zarzuelas (with spoken components) were performed in Mexico City; English and Italian operas played in cities in the northeastern United States; French operas were enjoyed in New Orleans; Mexican composers like Cenobio Paniagua (1821–1882) wrote operas with Italian libretti; and a Wagnerian cult formed in the United States near the end of the nineteenth century. Concurrently, US composers like Louis Moreau Gottschalk, John Knowles Paine, and Amy Beach were writing instrumental art music in the Romantic style of their European counterparts. Popular musical genres like Broadway musical comedy, vaudeville, or variety theater (which supported Tin Pan Alley, the song-writing industry in New York), wind-band marches, and ragtime all use Western harmony, and US popular music spread globally via radio and records after World War I (from jazz and musicals to rock and roll and hip hop).Settler Colonies. The global impact of European musical influence was the greatest in settler colonies. The earliest influence was enabled by sixteenth-century Spanish conquests in Mexico, which, as mentioned earlier, led to the introduction of chants, polyphony, and European instruments. Spanish arrivals such as Hernando Franco (1532–1585) brought the style of sixteenth-century sacred polyphony to Mexico. In the seventeenth century, psalms and hymn singing were introduced and became widespread throughout the Protestant United States. From the eighteenth century onwards, music for theater became popular across the Americas: Spanish zarzuelas (with spoken components) were performed in Mexico City; English and Italian operas played in cities in the northeastern United States; French operas were enjoyed in New Orleans; Mexican composers like Cenobio Paniagua (1821–1882) wrote operas with Italian libretti; and a Wagnerian cult formed in the United States near the end of the nineteenth century. Concurrently, US composers like Louis Moreau Gottschalk, John Knowles Paine, and Amy Beach were writing instrumental art music in the Romantic style of their European counterparts. Popular musical genres like Broadway musical comedy, vaudeville, or variety theater (which supported Tin Pan Alley, the song-writing industry in New York), wind-band marches, and ragtime all use Western harmony, and US popular music spread globally via radio and records after World War I (from jazz and musicals to rock and roll and hip hop).

The musics of enslaved Africans and their descendants were part of the soundscape of the Americas under settler colonization. African American composers of Western light music, art music, and avant-garde music—from Francis Johnson (1792–1844) to Julius Eastman (1940–1990)—remind us of that history. Because of the slave trade, Black composers like Afro-French composer Joseph Boulogne (1745–1799) and Cuban-French composer Joseph White Lafitte (b. 1836, Cuba; d. 1918, Paris), of West African and Spanish heritage, could be found all over the world.

Other Colonies.Beyond settler colonies, Western music had immense influence as well. Beginning at the Age of Imperialism, European powers colonized much of the Asia-Pacific (mid eighteenth century ff.) and Africa (late nineteenth century ff.). The consequences of this can be seen in the spread of hymns, brass bands, military bands, school songs, Western art music, and, in the twentieth century, commercial popular music. The so-called “island music” of Polynesia, performed with brass band, accordions, and mouth organs, emerged in the nineteenth century. In Melanesia today, cowboy songs and rock music can be heard. In East Asia, state-led programs of modernization involved systematic importation of Western technologies and cultures, including musics, changing the course of music histories in East Asian countries. Japan led the way during the period of the Meiji Restoration (1868–1889), instituting the same musical interventions when it colonized Korea (1910–1945). China took Japan’s lead, and Chinese musicians left to study Western music in Japan. There are many twentieth-century East Asian composers who are virtually unknown in Europe or the United States. In South Asia,filmigātor film songs, which were harmonized and accompanied by the Western orchestra (featuring strings in particular), became extremely popular in the twentieth century; music director and composer Naushad Ali (1919¬–2006) is credited with popularizing the use of the orchestra. Across Southeast Asia, commercial Western popular music, as well as other global popular musics based on the Western format (from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, India, and the Middle East), has had widespread influence. In Indonesia, new forms of European-influenced popular music emerged, beginning in the seventeenth century with thekroncongof Portuguese sailors and merchants, which was combined with Malay-Arabic singing to give rise todang dutin the eighteenth century.Other Colonies. Beyond settler colonies, Western music had immense influence as well. Beginning at the Age of Imperialism, European powers colonized much of the Asia-Pacific (mid eighteenth century ff.) and Africa (late nineteenth century ff.). The consequences of this can be seen in the spread of hymns, brass bands, military bands, school songs, Western art music, and, in the twentieth century, commercial popular music. The so-called “island music” of Polynesia, performed with brass band, accordions, and mouth organs, emerged in the nineteenth century. In Melanesia today, cowboy songs and rock music can be heard. In East Asia, state-led programs of modernization involved systematic importation of Western technologies and cultures, including musics, changing the course of music histories in East Asian countries. Japan led the way during the period of the Meiji Restoration (1868–1889), instituting the same musical interventions when it colonized Korea (1910–1945). China took Japan’s lead, and Chinese musicians left to study Western music in Japan. There are many twentieth-century East Asian composers who are virtually unknown in Europe or the United States. In South Asia, filmigāt or film songs, which were harmonized and accompanied by the Western orchestra (featuring strings in particular), became extremely popular in the twentieth century; music director and composer Naushad Ali (1919¬–2006) is credited with popularizing the use of the orchestra. Across Southeast Asia, commercial Western popular music, as well as other global popular musics based on the Western format (from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, India, and the Middle East), has had widespread influence. In Indonesia, new forms of European-influenced popular music emerged, beginning in the seventeenth century with the kroncong of Portuguese sailors and merchants, which was combined with Malay-Arabic singing to give rise to dang dut in the eighteenth century.

In the Middle East, Western notation was introduced in the nineteenth century along with the creation of large Middle Eastern ensembles inspired by the symphony orchestra. Conservatories were established in the twentieth century, and suitable modes were harmonized with tonic-dominant alternation by composers such as Ali Naqi Vaziri (1886–1979, Iran). Egyptian composers like Hasan Rashid (1896–1969) combinedmaqāmāt with the Western contrapuntal style. Western conservatories, symphony orchestras, and opera houses can be found all across the Middle East, as well as throughout the rest of the world (the Americas, Africa, and Central, South, Southeast, and East Asia).

In Africa, access to Western music education was initially provided through correspondence courses and exams offered by British music schools. This led to the formation of college music departments in Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, and Kenya, where students were trained in European and African compositional techniques. In Africa music scholarship is published in English, French, and German. The effect of colonial music education can be seen beginning in the nineteenth century with John Knox Bokwe (1855–1922), who wrote the first notated composition by a black South African as well as the decolonial hymn “Plea for Africa” (ca. 1894).³⁹ In the twentieth century, a large variety of African musics have hybridized with commercial Western popular music, giving rise to guitar-based highlife in Ghana; 39juju and fuji, based on Yoruba drumming and praise singing in Nigeria and Benin; Nigerian Afrobeat (e.g., Fela Kuti); modern taarab (in Tanzania and Kenya), which is originally a form of sung poetry that originated in late nineteenth century Egypt but is now mixed with electric guitars, basses, and accordions; Cuban-inspired, guitar-based popular music from the former Belgian Congo and French Congo capitals; isicathamiya, Zulu male a cappella choral singing of South Africa, which has elements of minstrel music (brought by visiting US musicians in the nineteenth century) and Christian hymns. Francophone and Anglophone popular music is produced by musicians in the former French (Guinea, Mali, Ivory Coast) and British (Nigeria, Ghana) colonies.

Decolonial Narrative 5: There Are Music Histories Elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia-Pacific

Given the geographic proximity of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, it is unsurprising that their music histories are intertwined. Because successive Greek, Roman, and Arab empires have conquered large parts of the Mediterranean coast, there is a significant degree of musical exchange between different civilizations. In addition, Europe is musically connected with settler colonies in the Americas and Australasia. Because of the various relationships between these geographies, their music histories can be organized chronologically in a more or less coherent narrative. Multiple antiquities led to the first period of global musical influence during the Arab empire, which led to global flows westward through north Africa to Muslim Iberia and eastwards to Central, East, and South Asia. Following that, European colonization led to the integration of global musics with Western art and popular musics.

Beginning with antiquity, there have been links between the geographies mentioned above, on the one hand, and sub-Saharan Africa and Asia-Pacific, on the other. These links include the Silk Road, which brought Arabic instruments to China, and European colonial routes that brought Western art and popular musics to different regions in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia-Pacific beginning in the seventeenth century. However, much of the music histories of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia-Pacific have unfolded independently of the rest of the world until recent centuries, and these histories do not fit into the tripartite chronological division of before 500 CE, ca. 500–1500, and 1500ff., used in the previous sections. The medial period of 500–1500 makes sense for Europe, the Middle East, and northern Africa because of the changing fortunes of various empires, specifically the weakness of Europe and the rise of the Arab empire during this period, after which European colonization commenced. While the histories of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia-Pacific are often recounted according to some version of the tripartite periodization, my position is that their histories do not cohere with that three-part structure, and it makes little sense to chop these histories into bits to be recounted in each of the three parts simply to fit the Mediterranean nexus. The relative independence of sub-Saharan African and Asian-Pacific music histories show that not all roads lead to Europe, as they have often done under European colonization. Furthermore, while there have been exchanges within and between sub-Saharan Africa and Asia-Pacific, these geographies have also been the backdrop of music histories that unfolded in pockets of relative insularity—and these pockets are just as much a part of history as the more properly “global” forms of history characterized by exchange and integration. It needs hardly be said that sub-Saharan Africa and Asia-Pacific “have” histories,⁴⁰ contradicting the nineteenth-century European view that certain “uncivilized” global peoples did not have histories and were therefore in an infantile state of development.⁴¹

Sub-Saharan Africa.First, a brief overview of African musics, which are conditioned by ecological factors. The musics of peoples of the Central African rain forests are traditionally vocal based, since it is impractical for them to carry bulky instruments. In contrast, the sedentary agricultural civilizations of the coastal savanna have made use of readily available materials for instrument construction, such as wood for xylophones and gourds for drums. String instruments are widespread, as they can be constructed using materials found everywhere, even in the desert where wood is scarce. Central African forest peoples have lost their languages due to interaction with the majority Bantu peoples; musical exchange is seen in that the former have adopted the latter’s drums and strings, while Bantu peoples have adapted the forest peoples’ polyphony, as heard in the large horn and flute ensembles of the Banda people of the Central African Republic.Sub-Saharan Africa. First, a brief overview of African musics, which are conditioned by ecological factors. The musics of peoples of the Central African rain forests are traditionally vocal based, since it is impractical for them to carry bulky instruments. In contrast, the sedentary agricultural civilizations of the coastal savanna have made use of readily available materials for instrument construction, such as wood for xylophones and gourds for drums. String instruments are widespread, as they can be constructed using materials found everywhere, even in the desert where wood is scarce. Central African forest peoples have lost their languages due to interaction with the majority Bantu peoples; musical exchange is seen in that the former have adopted the latter’s drums and strings, while Bantu peoples have adapted the forest peoples’ polyphony, as heard in the large horn and flute ensembles of the Banda people of the Central African Republic.

The history of African cultures and musics is preserved in oral tradition that diverges from conventional sources used in normative historical research. For example, the history of the Mandinka people over centuries is narrated in the music ofjalolu professional musicians in Gambia, West Africa, whose songs narrate the founding of the Mali empire (1234–1600) by the warrior king Sundiata Keita. A central value of the jalolu is truthfulness in their recounting of history.

Alongsig̀bìn drums (a set of footed cylindrical drums) were played in Nigeria in the tenth through the fourteenth centuries; and the dùndún pressure drum, now associated with Yoruba culture and known in a broad belt across the savanna region, appears in plaques made in fifteenth-century Benin.

Migration of peoples within Africa can be traced through the iconography of archaeological artefacts such as instruments and objects. Based on available evidence, single and double iron bells, probably West African, spread to western Central Africa during the Iron Age (200 BCE–1000 CE). From the seventeenth century on, various kinds of lamellaphones (with iron keys) travelled in different directions, northward from Zimbabwe and eastward from Congo. In the nineteenth century, the slave and ivory trade resulted in the inland migration of instruments. For example, thezeze flatbar zither, long known along the East African coast, spread inland to Zambia and elsewhere. Slaves often came from the hinterland, separated from coastal European slave traders by buffer zones that were inhabited by intermediary African “merchant tribes” who facilitated the trade.

Asia-Pacific

1. Central Asia, East Asia, Oceania. The earliest recorded history for Asian-Pacific musics extend to the Chinese Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BCE), from which we have oracle bones (for divination) containing symbols representing instruments. In contrast to a three-period structure (before 500, 500–1500, 1500ff.), music histories across China, Korea, and Japan are traditionally organized by dynasties. Korea had musical contact with China beginning in the fourth century and Japan from the seventh century. Multiple waves of Chinese influence have reached Japan and especially Korea over the past two millennia, bringing court music, Chinese instruments, Chinese music theory, and Buddhist chanting to these regions. Musics and instruments were then hybridized with local performance practices and tastes. Vietnam was ruled by China from 111 BCE to 980 CE, and Vietnamese musical genres (theater, court, chamber, and ceremonial) closely parallel Chinese ones. The path of Chinese musical influence can be traced through the example of the Chineseguqinzither (dating from 1000 BCE), which has parallels in the Koreankōmun’go(seventh through ninth centuries CE), Japanesekoto(seventh and eighth centuries CE), and Vietnamesedan tranh(before the tenth century CE). Musical developments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been addressed in the previous section; they reflect the creativity and agency of East Asian composers and performers of hybrid and Western musics.

From the nineteenth century onwards, large scale migration occurred with East Asian laborers going to Southeast Asia and the Americas. Among these migrants were the Japanese who moved to Hawaii as cane-field workers in the late nineteenth century, whose folk song is known asholehole bushi. These sugar plantations were owned by the descendants of US missionaries, who increasingly cornered the Indigenous Hawaiian monarchy, eventually overthrowing it, leading to the United States’ annexation of Hawaii in 1898. It is because of this historical context that the last Hawaiian monarch and the only Hawaiian queen regnant Lili’uokalani’s (1838–1917) famous “Aloha ʻOe” (ca. 1878), though written as a lover’s good-bye, is often received as a lament for the loss of her country.⁴²

If the seaward path from Japan to Hawaii demonstrates the global nature of history in the inadvertent entanglement of Japanese laborers with US colonial ambitions, inland paths between Central and East Asia were similarly global in nature. For example, Mongolian music was performed in China during the period of Mongolian rule, known as the Chinese Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), and later as well in the Qing dynasty (1644–1912, led by the Manchu people), which annexed Mongolia.

1. South and Southeast Asia. Music history in South Asia can be traced to the fifth-century dramaturgical treatiseNātya Śāstra, which discusses music and dance in the context of Sanskrit theater and theorizes musical scales and modes.Nātya Śāstrabecame the basis of music treatises in the succeeding centuries. During the period of the Islamic Golden Age (eighth through fourteenth centuries), Arabic and Persian music that flowed along the path of Arabic conquests likely began to influence Indian musics. The first discussion ofrāga(similar to Arabic and Persian conceptions of mode) appears in the 800s. Middle Eastern influence reached a peak during the Islamic Mughal empire (1526–1857, founded by a Central Asian ruler), when the Persian language and Persian musical terms were used at court. Near the beginning of the Mughal empire (ca. 1600), the art music of South Asia split into the Northern Hindustani and Southern Carnatic traditions. Genealogies of both musics are well known, with music passed down mainly in families. Hindustani music is traced to the guru Tansen (ca. 1500–1589) and Carnatic music to the three gurus Tyāgarāja (1767–1847), Śyāma Śāstri (1762–1827), and Muttusvāmi Dīksitar (1775–1835).

Music history in Southeast Asia shows the confluence of Indigenous, Indian, and Muslim elements. Influence of India over Southeast Asia can be discerned early on, as seen with Indonesia stems from the period of European colonization and is derived from the Latin word for India, Indus). In the Indian epic Ramayana (seventh century BCE–third century CE), Java is mentioned as the destination where the Indian goddess Sita is to be found. From the third century CE, Indian traders and missionaries began to exert an influence on Indonesia, where Indianized Hindu–Buddhist kingdoms ruled from the fifth through the sixteenth centuries. The myriad versions of and names for the Ramayana in various countries (e.g., Reamker in Cambodia, Ramakien in Thailand, etc.) attest to Indian influence across Southeast Asia. The earliest evidence of music-making in Southeast Asia, in the bas-reliefs at the Buddhist Borobudur temple in central Java, shows the xylophone and a single pot-gong, which are key instruments in Indonesian gamelan ensembles (which in Javanese mythology was created in 230 CE, predating Hindu-Buddhist influence). However, the largest musical ensembles of gong-chime sets and large and small hanging bossed gongs are found on bas-reliefs from the eleventh through the fourteenth centuries on mainland Southeast Asia in Angkor, central Cambodia. From the eighth century, Arabic traders brought Islamic influence, and Islamic dynasties were established in the Malay Archipelago from the thirteenth century. The gamelan ensemble came to be associated with Islam thereafter.

As we have seen, music histories within and between sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific are largely independent of the Mediterranean nexus and do not fit into its tripartite chronology except in a forced manner. Along with the former decolonial narratives, this final fifth narrative decenters Western music history, paving the way for new imaginings of music history in a global direction.

Throughout global music history, global peoples—from the period of multiple antiquities, to the Arab empire, to Indigenous peoples and African slaves in settler colonies, to global peoples who remade Western sounds in the European colonial era, to the relatively independent spheres (musically speaking) of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia-Pacific—have always made music, whether in times of prosperity or under catastrophic circumstances. More to the point, global music history reminds us that the agency of global people is inextricably intertwined with European colonization, both historical and ongoing.

APPENDIX 1. Music History 1: Global Overview

Syllabus

Course Overview

This course examines global music history. We begin with a chronological approach, first covering ancient civilizations before 500 CE (part 1). Part 2 covers the period ca. 500–1500, when Islamic caliphates conquered territories across the Mediterranean coast, providing a historical reference for comparative similarities across musical traditions from different continents. Part 3 covers the next chronological time period, the era of European settler colonization (1500ff.), which anchors our investigation of the music history of Indigenous peoples in Australasia and the Americas, as well as (in the latter region) the music history of enslaved Africans and their descendants. Part 4 covers the same time period as part 3, examining the global spread of Western musics under European colonization. The final part 5 concentrates on musical flows between and within sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific that stretch back to the time of multiple antiquities. By the end of the course, students should have grasped the multiple threads of global music histories in the plural. They should appreciate that Western music is just one among many global musics.

Reference Texts and Recordings

Jonathan Stock,World Sound Matters(Mainz: Schott Music, 1996), comprises textbook (“teacher’s manual”), CD anthology, and transcriptions, sold separately. All recordings are accompanied by scores in the “transcriptions” book.World Sound Matters (Mainz: Schott Music, 1996), comprises textbook (“teacher’s manual”), CD anthology, and transcriptions, sold separately. All recordings are accompanied by scores in the “transcriptions” book.

Steven Cornelius and Mary Natvig,Music: A Social Experience, 3rd edition (New York: Routledge, 2022).

Don Michael Randel ed.,The Harvard Dictionary of Music, 4th edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).

Claude V Palisca and J. Peter Burkholder eds.,Norton Recorded Anthology of Western Music, 7th edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014).

Topics

The 28 topics are labelled by lesson number, rather than by week. There are 28 lessons which fall within 14 weeks, assuming 2 lessons per week.

Readings fromWorld Sound Matters (“teacher’s manual”) are indicated as “W[page number],” those from Music: A Social Experience are indicated as “M[page number],” and those from The Harvard Dictionary of Music are indicated as “H[page number;entry].”

CD tracks fromWorld Sound Matters and Music: A Social Experience are indicated as decimals following page numbers. For example, [W30-1;1.] indicates World Sound Matters teacher’s manual, pages 30–31, CD 1, track 14. “Norton” indicates the recorded anthology.

Part 1: Multiple Antiquities Existed Before 500 CE

Music has existed since prehistory and was key to many ancient civilizations. The three case studies here are chosen because of the relative ease of access to musical materials.

1. Ancient Egypt: Ramesside Egypt love songs ca. 1292–1069 BCE [H285-6;“Egypt”].
2. Ancient Greece: Greek epigram song (Epitaph of Seikilos, 408 BCE; Norton). Chorus in Greek tragedy (Stasimon chorus from Euripedes’s Orestes; Norton) [H357-62;“Greece”], with double clarinetaulos, also found in ancient Egypt.
3. Ancient China: Chinese archaeological discoveries (bianzhongbell chimes of Zeng Hou Yi, 433 BCE) [H259-69; “East Asia”(I)].

Part 2: Arabic and Persian Music Spread Globally During the Islamic Golden Age (8–14C CE) and European Medieval Period (6–15C CE)

The Islamic Golden Age roughly corresponded to the European Middle Ages. At its height, the Islamic empire stretched westward to North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula and eastward to Central Asia (right next to China’s borders), and Islamic conquests extended to South Asia. Much of the music discussed in this section originated from that period, though the specific date for the creation of a work may not be known. Newer musical traditions created in later centuries but from the same geographies are included in this section. Islamic, Jewish, and Christian chant or music is included. European medieval art music, much of which centers on melody, like global musics, is positioned alongside the latter.

4-5. Art music flows. Persian art music suitedastgāh (Tasnif Djān-e Djahān, precursor of dastgāh originated ca. 700) [W42-3;1.] [H549-56;“Near and Middle East”]. Composer of Al-Andalus, Ziryâb, and Andalusian nawba music suite from Morocco (Nawba hijāzī al-kabīr, brought to Morocco in esp. 15C) [W51-2;1.]. South Indian Carnatic vīnā lute music (varnum, opens a recital; originated ca. 1600) [W37-9;1.] [H812-22;“South Asia”]. Comparison of art music forms and practices and music theories (concepts of mode; adaptation of the Greek tetrachord).

1. Religious music. Jewish Yom Kippur day of atonement (Kol Nidre, notated 18C, from centuries earlier) [M90-1;2.10] [H435-8;“Jewish Music”]. Music of the Mevlevī Sufi order in Turkey (Taksim Hüseyni, order founded 13C) [W44-5;1.23]. Medieval sacred drama (Hildegard of Bingen,Ordo virtutum, ca. 1151) [N1.17-8].
2. Comparative chants. Gregorian chant and the misinterpretation of Greek modes (codified in 8C;Mass for Christmas Day; Norton). Chant-based polyphony (2-4 voice organum, 9–13C; Norton). Comparison with Quran recitation of Egypt (Sūrat Yusūf, 12C ff. [concert-style recitation uncommon from that time]) [W45-6;1.24].
3. Dance and wedding music. Medievalestampiewith vielle (14C, performance by Thomas Binkley drawing on Andalusian musical tradition in North Africa; Norton), and the origins of early European string instruments in the Arabic rebab and Byzantine lyra. Spanishflamencodance (A mí no me gustan las rubias; Roma migration from India to Spain in 9–14C) [W85-6;2.18]. Wedding music by Egyptian folk ensemble (Yā Farawla, “Oh Strawberry”; possible remnants of ancient Egyptian music in folk music) [W48-50;1.26].
4. Silk Road. Chinese instruments from Middle East and Central Asia.
5. European medieval music in global context: Is Western music a part of global music?

Part 3: European Settler Colonizers Suppressed Indigenous and African Musics (1500ff.)

In decolonial theory, the Americas and Australia are considered to be colonized, still, by white settlers. The musics of settler colonies can be understood as temporally situated in relation to colonization, either predating it (Indigenous peoples’ traditional music) or emerging during colonization (musics of African slaves and European settlers). Colonization decimated Indigenous American peoples and musics and brought African slaves to the Americas, where in North America, their musics could not be preserved due to the policy of dispersion of ethnic groups.

1. Before European arrival. Inuitkatajjaqwomen’s vocal game (probably pre-acculturation, before 1800s) [W93-4;2.22]. Inuit song [W94-5;2.23] [H136;“Canada(IV)”]. Australian Arnhem Land Aboriginal music (Birruck, rock wallaby; pre-colonial, before 1788) [W36-7;1.18] [H576-7;“Oceania and Australia(II)”].
2. European settler colonization. From the Spanish suppression of Mayan civilization and musical re-education of Indigenous peoples in polyphony (16C) to the Zapatista movement for Mayans in Mexico (El Himno Zapatista, ca. 1994) [M114-5] [H508-9;“Mexico”]. Sioux national anthem (probably from 19C at the height of settler colonization) [W96-7;2.24] [H38-42;“American Indian music”]. Arapaho American Ghost Dance song (ca. 1889) and the end of Indigenous American armed resistance [M127-8;3.3,3.4].
3. Slavery and African/Black musics. African American field holler (originated during Atlantic slave trade, 16C–19C), blackface minstrelsy, spirituals, and musical acculturation (gospel) [H26-8;“African American music”]. White appropriation of black music (blues, gospel) in US rock and roll.
4. European American folk music. Texas prison farm work song (Godamighty Drag; probably 19C or after) [W97-8;2.25] [H932-6;“United States”].

Part 4: Western Music Spread Globally Due to European Colonization (1500ff.)

While European music was relatively insular in the medieval period, all kinds of European music spread across the world beginning in the 16C with colonization and missionization. From the 19C, musical “modernization” was led by governments, particularly in East Asia. In the 20C, US popular music styles spread across the world with the creation of a global market by the popular music industry; independent regional popular music industries emerged from the 1980s onward.

1. Christian missionary music. Renaissance polyphony in Mexico by Hernando Franco (1532–1585). Baroque pipe organs in the Philippines. Hymns in Melanesia, Indonesia (influenced 20C pop music), and southern Africa (influencedisicathamiya, Zulu male a cappella choral singing from late 19C). Comparative studies:
   • 4-part hymns in the US by William Billings (1746–1800)
2. De/coloniality. Decolonial Christian hymns by black South African composer John Knox Bokwe (Plea for Africa, ca. 1894). British colonial music education in southern Africa.
3. Light, art, and avant-garde music. Afro-French composer Joseph Boulogne (b. Guadeloupe, Caribbean, 1745; d. Paris, 1799). Performance of European quadrille dance in Singapore (1819ff.). Combination of Arabicmaqāmātwith Western counterpoint by Hasan Rashid (1896–1969) in Egypt.Filmigātor film songs with Western orchestra in India by Naushad Ali (1919–2006). Music in the style of Debussy from China, by Ding Shande (1911–1995). Cosmopolitan avant-gardist Ezequiel Menalled (b. Argentina, 1980) in the Netherlands. Conservatories, orchestras, and opera houses all over the world. State-led musical “modernization” in Japan during the Meiji restoration (1868–1889) and in China from May Fourth movement (1919) onward. Comparative studies:Spanishzarzuelasin Mexico and Italian opera by Mexican composer Cenobio Paniagua (1821–1882)Vaudeville, Broadway, and Wagnerian cult in 19C USSymphonies by African American composer Florence Price (1887–1953)
   • Spanishzarzuelasin Mexico and Italian opera by Mexican composer Cenobio Paniagua (1821–1882)
   • Vaudeville, Broadway, and Wagnerian cult in 19C US
   • Symphonies by African American composer Florence Price (1887–1953)
4. Brass band and school songs. Brass band in 19C “island music” of Polynesia. Public school songs by Isawa Shuji (1851–1917, Japan) and Shen Xingong (1870–1947, China). Comparative studies:
   • Wind band marches in the US by John Philip Sousa (1854–1932) (Norton)
   • US public school songs (19C)
5. Popular music. Indonesia (kroncong, which was originally by 17C Portuguese sailors and merchants and later became the first pan-Indonesian popular music in the 20C; anddang dut, which combineskroncongwith Malay-Arabic singing). Commercial popular music in East Asia (Shanghai jazz, Japanese karaoke industry, K-pop). Commercial popular music in Africa (guitar-based highlife in Ghana;jujuandfuji, based on Yoruba drumming and praise singing in Nigeria and Benin; Nigerian Afrobeat; moderntaarabin Tanzania and Kenya, a tradition of sung poetry now accompanied with electric guitars, basses, and accordions; Cuban-inspired, guitar-based popular music from the former Belgian Congo and French Congo capitals).

Part 5: There Are Music Histories Elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa.Although the history of African musics can be traced through archaeological finds and historical observation of African musics in Latin America, it is difficult to pinpoint the historical origination of many musics. What is of some certainty is that the traditional musics in this section predate the era of intense European colonization (1890s–1960s), but it is often difficult to ascertain how long these musics have been around. As with the Americas and Australia, European colonization is a chronological marker in the music history of Africa.Sub-Saharan Africa. Although the history of African musics can be traced through archaeological finds and historical observation of African musics in Latin America, it is difficult to pinpoint the historical origination of many musics. What is of some certainty is that the traditional musics in this section predate the era of intense European colonization (1890s–1960s), but it is often difficult to ascertain how long these musics have been around. As with the Americas and Australia, European colonization is a chronological marker in the music history of Africa.

1. Archaeology and musical migration within Africa, from Indonesia to Africa (ca. 0–500 CE), and in the Black Atlantic (1500–1800).
2. Oral history.Jaloluprofessional musicians of West Africa (Kelefaba; tradition dates from ca. 1200) [M33-6;1.12] [H17-26;“Africa”].
3. Traditions from before European colonization. Community and participation: Chorus of the Dorzé people in Ethiopia (Dama; probably before the Scramble for Africa, pre-1890s, same for the rest of the traditional musics in this lesson) [W58-9;2.2]; Baka Bambuké (pygmy) yodelling in Gabon [W62-3;2.4]. Sociality and politics: Whispered praise song of Burundi (for benefactor) [W63-5;2.5]; Hutu child’s song withumuduribow (Burundi) [W66-8;2.7]; Political competition inTimbilaxylophone ensemble music of the Chopi people in Mozambique (Mabandla; performed for Chopi chiefs in colonial times, 1505–1975) [W68-9;2.8].

Asia-Pacific.The music histories of East Asia are relatively well documented because of the tradition of historiography in that region, and important historical sources for South Asia have survived. Both ancient and more recent history are covered in the topics below, with global circulation becoming highly significant in the last two centuries (though there have always been varying degrees of global contact throughout history).Asia-Pacific. The music histories of East Asia are relatively well documented because of the tradition of historiography in that region, and important historical sources for South Asia have survived. Both ancient and more recent history are covered in the topics below, with global circulation becoming highly significant in the last two centuries (though there have always been varying degrees of global contact throughout history).

23-4. Hybridity (East Asia). Chineseguqin zither music (You Lan, possibly mistakenly attributed to Confucius [551–479 BCE]). Japanese koto (modelled after guqin, 7–8C) [H269-73;“East Asia”(II)]. Korean kōmun’go zither (modelled after guqin, 7–9C) [W11-2;1.] [H273-5;“East Asia”(III)]. Vietnamese dan tranh zither (modelled after guqin, before 10C) [W22-3;1.] [H826-7;“Southeast Asia”(VI)].

1. Hybridity (South/Southeast Asia). Javanese dance-operaLangen Mandra Wanara(late 19C; based on the Indian epicRamayana[7C BCE– 3C CE]) [W27-8;1.12] [H828-34;“Southeast Asia”(IX)].
2. Colonization. Mongol empire to Mongolian court music in Qing dynasty China (17C to early 20C) [H275-6;“East Asia”(IV)]. Hawaii’s last queen, Lili’uokalani (He mele lāhui Hawai‘i, 1866; andAlohaʻOe, 1878; adapted from Olivia Bloechl’s syllabus).
3. Diaspora.Holehole bushicanefield songs of Japanese migrant workers in Hawaii (late 19C to early 20C; adapted from Olivia Bloechl’s syllabus).
4. Gender and sexuality. Women’s Balinese gamelan ensembleMekar sari(1980s) [M59-60]. Transgenderhijraperformance in India (19C). Cross-dressing singers who profess heterosexuality in 20C performance of Chinese opera (Li Yugang).

APPENDIX 2. Global Music History Topics by Western Chronology

As can be seen from the five decolonial narratives in the syllabus in Appendix 1, global music history does not proceed along the unilinear temporality of Western music history, as implied in the chronological sequence of eras in most textbooks. Here, global music history topics are arranged according to Western chronology only for the practical reason of ease of use by instructors who are teaching Western music history and wish to incorporate some global elements in their courses. Topics within sections are roughly arranged by geography: Europe and Middle East, Americas, Africa, Pacific islands, East/Southeast/South Asia. Topics are largely derived from Appendix 1 and are not intended to be exhaustive. Relevant resources are indicated in abbreviation as follows:

DN1-5 – Specific decolonial narrative from the syllabus in Appendix 1. DN1: Multiple antiquities existed before 500 CE. DN2: Arabic and Persian music spread globally during the Islamic Golden Age (8–14C CE) and European medieval period (6–15C CE). DN3: European settler colonizers suppressed Indigenous and African musics (1500 ff.). DN4: Western music spread globally due to European colonization (1500ff.). DN5: There are music histories elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia-Pacific.

BMH – Gavin S. K. Lee, “Black Music History” resources https://docs.google.com/document/d/14typjWas0V8gcIuXf4jxmjKP10XEIgFW00UfReRuFeA/edit#heading=h.eobtgqk51wy

QT – “QTBIPOC Composers Project” (QTBIPOC: queer and trans Black, Indigenous, People of Color), in Gavin S. K. Lee ed., “Global Musical Modernisms” HC website https://hcommons.org/groups/global-musical-modernisms/docs/

SMH – Gavin S. K. Lee, “Sinophone Music History” resources https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gKcUeyFB96MCtRSCouDWdfHwe0O_GfekW8aGN1IzqvI/edit

OB – Olivia Bloech’s essay and syllabus in this special issue

BGP – Burkholder, Grout, and Palisca, A History of Western Music

Antiquity and Medieval Period

Multiple antiquities: China, Egypt, Greece (DN1)

Jewish and Byzantine chant (BGP)

Spanishflamenco dance; Roma migration from India to Spain in 800s–1300s CE (DN2)

Influence of Arabic poetry on troubadours

Global spread of Arabic music to East and South Asia (DN2)

Transculturation of Arab and Byzantine instruments (DN2)

Inspiration from Arab-Andalusian music in contemporary performance of medieval music (DN2)

Persian art music suitedastgāh (DN2)

Ottoman music (1200s CE ff.)

Mevlevī Sufi order in Turkey (DN2)

Musical migration within Africa and from Indonesia to Africa (DN2)

Afrig̀bìn drums, 900s–1300s CE (DN5)

Jalolu professional musicians of West Africa (1200s CE ff.) (DN5)

Accounts of African musics from 1300s CE Arab travelers such as Ibn Baṭṭūṭah (OB)

East/Southeast Asian zithers (Chineseguqin, Japanese koto, Korean kōmun’go, Vietnamese dan tranh) (DN5)

Mongolian court tunes of the Chinese Yuan dynasty (1279–1368 CE) (DN5)

Renaissance Period

Jewish traditions in Europe (BGP)

Renaissance polyphony of Spanish composer Hernando Franco in the New World (DN3)

Destruction of Mayan civilization and musical re-education of Indigenous peoples in polyphony: e.g., Don Hernando Franco (DN4)

African archaeology: Beninesedùndún pressure drum, 1400s (DN5)

Timbila xylophone ensemble music of the Chopi chiefs in Mozambique (1500s ff.) (DN5)

Baroque Period

European dances from Latin America: chacona (Italian), sarabande (French suite) (BGP)

Jewish music: cantillation, polyphony (BGP)

African American field holler (DN3)

Spanish colonies: Central and South America (opera, zarzuela, sacred villancico) (BGP)

Baroque pipe organs in the Philippines (DN4)

African archaeology: ancient Zimbawean lamellophones migrated northward (1600s–1700s) (DN5)

Classic Period

Handel and slavery⁴³

New World: William Billings, Calvinists, Moravians (BGP)

Afro European composers: Joseph Bologne, Charles Ignatius Sancho (DN4)

Romantic Period

Exoticism: Bizet,Carmen; Borodin, Prince Igor; Rimsky-Korsakov, Sheherazade; Verdi, Aida (BGP)

Wagner’s anti-Semitic polemicDas Judentum in der Musik⁴⁴

Afro European composers: José White Lafitte (Cuba, France, 1838–1918), Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (UK, 1875–1912) (BMH)

Wagnerian cult in US⁴⁵

Dvorák in the US (BGP)

US composers: Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869), John Knowles Paine (1839–1906), George Whitefield Chadwick (1854–1931), Horatio Parker (1863–1919), Edward MacDowell (1860–1908) (BGP)

US conductor Theodore Thomas (1835–1905) (BGP)

US church music and shape-note singing (BGP)

US operetta and vaudeville (BGP)

Wind band marches in the US by John Philip Sousa (1854–1932) (BGP)

Broadway (DN4)

US public school songs (DN4)

Texas prison farm work song (DN3)

African American musics: spirituals, ragtime, blues, jazz (BMH)

African American composers: Francis Johnson (1792–1844), Charles Lucien Lambert (1828–1896), Lucien-Léon Guillaume Lambert Jr. (1858–1945), John Thomas Douglass (1847–1886), Harry Burleigh (1866–1949), Will Marion Cook (1869–1944), Robert Nathaniel Dett (1882–1943), Gussie Lord Davis (1863–1899, Tin Pan Alley) (BMH)

Blackface minstrelsy (DN3)

Sioux national anthem (DN3)

Arapaho American Ghost Dance song (ca. 1889) and the end of Indigenous American armed resistance (DN3)

Brazilian opera composer Antonio Carlos Gomes (1836–1896) (BGP)

Italian opera by Mexican composer Cenobio Paniagua (1821–1882) (DN4)

Hymns influenced Zulu male a cappella choral singingisicathamiya in South Africa (late 1800s) (DN4)

Decolonial Christian hymns by black South African composer John Knox Bokwe (DN4)

Brass band in “island music” of Polynesia (DN4)

Hawaii’s last queen, Lili’uokalani (He mele lāhui Hawai‘i, 1866; and Aloha ʻOe, 1878) (OB)

Holeholebushi canefield songs of Japanese migrant workers in Hawaii (late 1800s to early 1900s) (OB)

State-led musical “modernization” in Japan during the Meiji restoration (1868–1889) (DN4)

Public school songs by Isawa Shuji (1851–1917, Japan) (DN4)

Performance of European quadrille dance in Singapore (British colony founded in 1819) (DN4)

Javanese dance-operaLangen Mandra Wanara (late 19C; based on the Indian epic Ramayana [600s BCE–200s CE]) (DN5)

Transgenderhijra performance in India (DN5)

20th Century

Cosmopolitan avant-gardist Ezequiel Menalled (b. Argentina, 1980) in the Netherlands (DN4)

Combination of Arabicmaqāmāt with Western counterpoint by Hasan Rashid (1896–1969) in Egypt (DN4)

African American musics: gospel, jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, rock, disco, funk, hip hop, rap (BMH)

White appropriation of black music (blues, gospel) in US rock and roll (DN3)

African American composers: Roland Hayes (1887–1977), Florence Price (1887–1953), William Grant Still (1895–1978), William Dawson (1899–1990), Zenobia Powell Perry (1908–2004), Margaret Bonds (1913–1972), Ulysses Kay (1917–1995), Hale Smith (1925–2009, jazz), George Walker (1922–2018), Valerie Capers (b. 1935, jazz), Moses Hogan (1957–2003), William Banfield (b. 1961), Michael Abels (b. 1962), Terence Blanchard (b. 1962), Valerie Coleman (b. 1970), Xavier Dubois Foley (b. 1994), Undine Smith Moore (1904–1989), Julia Perry (1924–1979), Julius Eastman (1940–1990), Adolphus Hailstork (b. 1941), Daniel Bernard Roumain (b. 1971, post-tonal),Wynton Marsalis (b. 1961), Wilbert Roget, II (b. 1983, modernist), Omar Thomas (1984) (BMH)

QTBIPOC composers in the US: Mari Esabel Valverde, Holland Andrews, Nebal Maysaud, Ahmed Al Abaca, James Vitz-Wong, Mária Grand (1992-), Janelle Lawrence, Melika M. Fitzhugh, and Spencer Arias (1990-)⁴⁶ (46QT)

African composers: Thomas King Ekundayo Phillips (1884–1969, Nigeria), Fela Sowande (1905–1987, Nigeria), Samuel Akpabot (1932–2000, Nigeria), Akin Euba (1935–2020, Nigeria), Ayo Bankole (1935–1976, Nigeria), Laz Ekwueme (b. 1936, Nigeria), Joshua Uzoigwe (1946–2005, Nigeria), Ephraim Amu (1899–1995, Ghana), Philip Gbeho (1904–1976, Ghana) (BMH)

Conservatories, orchestras, and opera houses all over the world (DN4)

Zapatista movement for Mayans in Mexico (DN3)

British colonial music education in southern Africa (DN4)

Commercial popular music in Africa: guitar-based highlife in Ghana;juju and fuji, based on Yoruba drumming and praise singing in Nigeria and Benin; Nigerian Afrobeat; modern taarab in Tanzania and Kenya, a tradition of sung poetry now accompanied with electric guitars, basses, and accordions; Cuban-inspired, guitar-based popular music from the former Belgian Congo and French Congo capitals (DN4)

State-led musical “modernization” in China from May Fourth movement (1919) onward (DN4)

Public school songs by Shen Xingong (1870–1947, China) (DN4)

East Asian avant-garde composers:⁴⁷ Isang Yun, Unsuk Chin, Takemitsu, Chou Wenchung, Tan Dun, Zhou Long, Chen Yi, Bright Sheng, Lei Liang (47DN4)

K-pop, J-pop, C-pop (DN4)

Cross-dressing singers who profess heterosexuality in 20C performance of Chinese opera (Li Yugang) (DN5)

Shanghai jazz (DN4)

Japanese karaoke industry (DN4)

Indonesian popular music: kroncong, which was originally by Portuguese sailors and merchants (1600s) and later became the first pan-Indonesian popular music in the 20C; anddang dut, which combines kroncong with Malay-Arabic singing) (DN4)

Hymns influenced Indonesian pop music (DN4)

Women’s Balinese gamelan ensembleMekar sari (1980s) (DN5)

Filmigāt or film songs with Western orchestra in India by Naushad Ali (1919–2006) (DN4)

1. This is from Dylan Robinson’s own segment in the introduction titled “Beyond Western Musicalities,” co-authored with Maya Cunningham, Chris Stover, Leslie Tilley, and Anna Yu Wang for Engaging Students: Essays in Music Pedagogy 8 (2020): https://engagingstudentsmusic.org/index.php/engagingstudents/issue/view/245.[↩]
2. La paperson, A Third University is Possible (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/a-third-university-is-possible.[↩]
3. Tamara Levitz, “Why I Don’t Teach Global Music History,” Journal of Music History Pedagogy 13, no. 1 (2023): 118–37.[↩]
4. Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 1–40.[↩]
5. E.g., Levitz, “Why I Don’t Teach Global Music History,” 120.[↩]
6. Janet Mawhinney, “‘Giving up the Ghost’: Disrupting the (Re)Production of White Privilege in Anti-Racist Pedagogy and Organizational Change” (master’s thesis, University of Toronto, Ontatio Institutue for Studies in Education, 1998), http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0008/MQ33991.pdf.[↩]
7. For a critique of the positivist approach to land as the basis of both colonization and decolonization, which brackets the role played by colonial ideologies such as terra nullius in “clearing” land of Indigenous inhabitants, and a more complex account of colonial violence as rooted in modes of thinking, see Tapji Garba and Sara-Maria Sorentino, “Slavery Is a Metaphor: A Critical Commentary on Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang’s ‘Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,’” Antipode 52, no. 3 (2020): 764–82.[↩]
8. Ramón Grosfoguel, “The Epistemic Decolonial Turn,” Cultural Studies 21, no. 2–3 (2007): 211–23, at 213.[↩]
9. Two landmark volumes are Reinhard Strohm, ed., Studies on a Global History of Music: A Balzan Musicology Project (New York: Routledge, 2018); Reinhard Strohm, ed., The Music Road: Coherence and Diversity in Music from the Mediterranean to India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).[↩]
10. Michael Saffle and Hon-Lun Yang, China and the West: Music, Representation, Reception (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2017).[↩]
11. See Jonathan McCollum and David Hebert, eds., Theory and Method in Historical Ethnomusicology (New York: Lexington Books, 2014).[↩]
12. Christoph Wolff, “Defining Genius: Early Reflections of J. S. Bach’s Self-Image,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 145, no. 4 (2001): 474–81. Warren Dwight Allen, Philosophies of Music History: A Study of General Histories of Music 1600–1960 (New York: Dover, 1962 [1939]). An alternative to stylistic succession in music history is the “centuries” approach: e.g., Simon Keefe, ed., The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Susan McClary, “Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music,” in Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology, eds. Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas (New York: Routledge, 2006 [1994]), 205–34. On the construction of Beethoven versus Rossini, see Lawrence Kramer, Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 46.[↩]
13. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minnespolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).[↩]
14. See e.g., Lester Hu, “A Global Phonographic Revolution: Trans-Eurasian Resonances of Writing in Early France and China,” in Acoustemologies in Contact: Sounding Subjects and Modes of Listening in Early Modernity, eds. Suzanne Cusick and Emily Wilbourne (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2021), 167–200.[↩]
15. An important exception to the avoidance of big narratives is found in Mark Hijleh’s postulation of three major intercultural convergences: the Silk Road; the Iberian, European, and North African nexus during the Islamic Golden Age; and European colonization. Mark Hijleh, Towards a Global Music History: Intercultural Convergence, Fusion, and Transformation in the Human Musical Story (New York: Routledge, 2019).[↩]
16. See Wolf Schäfer, “Global History: Historiographical Feasibility and Environmental Reality,” in Conceptualizing Global History, eds. Bruce Mazlish and Ralph Buultjens (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 47–69.[↩]
17. See Sebastian Conrad, What Is Global History? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).[↩]
18. Schäfer, “Global History,” 49.[↩]
19. See Patrick Savage and Steven Brown, “Towards a New Comparative Musicology,” Analytical Approaches to World Music 2, no. 2 (2013): 148–97, http://www.aawmjournal.com/articles/2013b/Savage_Brown_AAWM_Vol_2_2.html.[↩]
20. See Reinhard Strohm, ed., Studies on a Global History of Music.[↩]
21. Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (New York: Vintage Books, 2017 [2015]).[↩]
22. Frankopan’s macro narrative is not only historically verifiable but has potent decolonial value in destabilizing the notions of entrenched civilizational difference and inevitable antagonism, as expressed in, e.g., Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Touchstone, 1997 [1996]).[↩]
23. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Picador, 2007).[↩]
24. See, respectively: James Currie, “Music after All,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 62, no. 1 (2009): 145–203. Martin Scherzinger, “Temporalities,” in The Oxford Handbook of Critical Concepts in Music Theory, eds. Alexander Rehding and Steven Rings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 234–70. Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” Critical Inquiry 35 (2009): 197–222.[↩]
25. This thesis has been articulated in relation to the early modern period in music, whereas I propose to expand this thesis to the entire span of global music history. See David Irving, “Rethinking Early Modern ‘Western Art Music’: A Global Music History Manifesto,” IMS Musicological Brainfood 3, no. 1 (2019): 6–10, https://brainfood.musicology.org/pdfs/ims_brainfood_3_no1_2019.pdf.[↩]
26. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).[↩]
27. Temporalities may be connected via “conjunction or coincidence rather than successive emplotment.” Stephen Tanaka, History Without Chronology (Ann Arbor, MI: Lever Press, 2019), 19. I retain the Gregorian calendar throughout this article for ease of reference, but this should not be taken to imply a single unbroken chronology of global time.[↩]
28. Tanaka, History Without Chronology, 91.[↩]
29. Hijleh, Towards a Global Music History, 60.[↩]
30. For example, in the landmark monograph on global music history by Western musicologists, Reinhard Strohm, ed., Studies on a Global History of Music, the introduction covers methodological issues (as it should) rather than offering a coherent universal account of music history. See Martin Stokes, “Notes and Queries on ‘Global Music History,’” in Strohm, ed., Studies on a Global History of Music, 3–18. A case study approach is adopted in Danielle Fosler-Lussier, Music on the Move (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020). Timothy Rice and Dave Wilson’s Gateways to Understanding Music attempts a chronological account of music with a global purview but is lacking in narrative structure. Part 1 on music before 1500 BCE is organized by genre, while parts 2 and 3 (1500–1900 BCE; 20C) are anchored in the diachronic array of styles familiar from Western music history textbooks, with a single world music example tagged on at the end of chapters without accounting for broader global historical currents in music. Timothy Rice and Dave Wilson, Gateways to Understanding Music (New York: Routledge, 2019).[↩]
31. Heidi Köpp-Junk, “The Earliest Music in Ancient Egypt,” The Ancient Near East Today 6, no. 1 (2018), https://www.asor.org/anetoday/2018/01/earliest-music-egypt/.[↩]
32. George T. Beech, “Troubadour Contacts with Muslim Iberia and Knowledge of Arabic: New Evidence Concerning William IX of Aquitaine,” Romania 113 (1992): 14–26.[↩]
33. Because of the Arab-European connection, music director Thomas Binkley drew inspiration from the living traditions of Arab-Andalusian music in his recording of European medieval music. Jonathan Schull, “Locating the Past in the Present: Living Traditions in the Performance of Early Music,” Ethnomusicology Forum 15, no. 1 (2006): 87–111.[↩]
34. Bruno Nettl, The Western Impact on World Music: Change, Adaptation, and Survival (New York: Schirmer Books, 1985).[↩]
35. E.g., Andrew F. Jones, Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001).[↩]
36. One of the clearest statements of this is Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 1–40. Many of the panels at the ICTM dialogues reflect this unflinching decolonial stance. “ICTM Dialogues 2021,” International Council for Traditional Music website, accessed Dec 19, 2021, https://ictmusic.org/dialogues2021/abstracts.[↩]
37. David McAllester, “North America/Native America,” in Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World’s Peoples, ed. Jeff Todd Titon (Belmont, CA: Schirmer Cengage Learning, 2009 [2002]), 33–82, at 76.[↩]
38. Kofi Agawu, “Tonality as a Colonizing Force in Africa,” in Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique, eds. Ronald Ronaldo and Tejumola Olaniyan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 334–56.[↩]
39. See Grant Olwage, “John Knox Bokwe, Colonial Composer: Tales about Race and Music,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 131, no. 1 (2006): 1–37.[↩]
40. See Gary Tomlinson, “Musicology, Anthropology, History,” in The Cultural Study of Music, 2nd ed., eds. Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert, and Richard Middleton (New York: Routledge, 2012), 59–72.[↩]
41. On social Darwinism, see Timothy Taylor, Beyond Exoticism: Western Music and the World (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 74.[↩]
42. The history in this paragraph is based on Olivia Bloech’s “Global Music History” syllabus; see 14.. in this special issue.[↩]
43. Ellen T Harris, “Critical Exchanges: Handel and Slave-Trading Companies. Handel, a Salaried Composer: A Response to David Hunter,” Music and Letters 103, no. 3 (2022): 541–548.[↩]
44. Richard Wagner, “Judaism in Music,” in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works volume 3 of 8, trans. William Ashton Ellis (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1894), 79-100.[↩]
45. Joseph Horowitz, “Finding a ‘Real Self’: American Women and the Wagner Cult of the Late Nineteenth Century,” The Musical Quarterly 78, no. 2 (1994): 189–205.[↩]
46. More information on these composers can be found on the Institute for Composer Diversity website. Dates of birth have been included where provided. Institute for Composer Diversity, accessed on May 2, 2024, https://www.composerdiversity.com/composer-database.[↩]
47. There are large numbers of Japanese and Korean composers, but that is beyond my range of expertise. Here are the other Chinese composers covered in SMH. From China: Xiao Youmei, Huang Zi, Xian Xinghai, He Lvting, Ma Sicong, Tan Xiaolin, Ding Shande, Qu Wei, Jiang Wenye, Jiang Dingxian, Ma Ke, Li Huanzhi, Zhao Yuanren, Zhu Jian’er, Sang Tong, Luo Zhongrong, Chen Mingzhi, Wu Zuqiang, Li Yinghai, Du Mingxin, Wang Lisan, Tian Feng, Li Zhongyong, Chen Gang, Wang Xilin, Huang Anlun, Jin Xiang, ChuWanghua, Gao Weijie, Xi Qiming, Cao Guangping, Zhao Xiaosheng, Yang Liqing, Qu Xiaosong, Zhang Xiaofu, Ye Xiaogang, Li Binyang, Guo Wenjing, Su Cong, Chen Yuanlin, Chen Xiaoyong, Yang Yong, Wang Fei, Mo Wuping, Xia Liang, Zhang Qianyi, Han Yong, Quan Jihao, Lu Pei, Liu Yuan, Luo Jingjing, Xu Jixing, Xu Yi, Cui Wenyu, Zhu Shirui, Jia Daqun, He Xuntian, Peng Zhimin, Zhang Dalong, Tang Jianping, Ge Ganru, Jia Guoping, and Qin Wenchen. From Hong Kong: Lin Sheng Shih, Doming Lam, Wong Yok Yee, Law Wing Fai, and Lam Bun Ching. From Taiwan: Lu Yen, Li Tai Hsiang, WuDinglian, PanShiji, DaiHongxuan, James Fei, Hsiao Ty Zen, and Lee Chih Chun. From Singapore: Leong Yoon Pin, Phoon Yew Tien, Tsao Chieh, Kelly Tang, Ho Chee Kong, Tan Chan Boon, Joyce Koh, Zechariah Goh, and Hoh Chung Shih. From Malaysia: Chong Kee Yong, Yii Kah Hoe, Ng Chong Lim, Teh Tze Siew, Chow Jun Yi, Chow Jun Yan, and Tan Zi Hua.[↩]