“Sounding Decolonial Futures” is a collaborative student and faculty project tied to the class, “Decolonizing Ethnomusicology: Moving from Colonial Approaches of Extraction to Community Engagement” that explores ethnomusicology’s colonialist legacies and suggests strategies to help sound decolonial futures.
The class was first taught in Fall 2019 and was taught again in Spring 2022. The students in that first iteration of the course agreed to be collectively credited as co-authors on the site in general but not individual posts. They are: Helena Colindres, Gabriela Linares, Momo Suzuki, & DaQuan Williams. The students in the 2022 class chose a different approach to credit.
Jennifer Fraser et al. Sounding Decolonial Futures: Decentering Ethnomusicology’s Colonialist Legacies. (2019, 2022)
The site is built using the digital platform Scalar which allows multimodal engagement through visual images, annotation of them, and interactive timelines, along with embedded hyperlinks modeling connections between the individuals, technologies, and their scholarly products. The site uses primary sources in the public domain and Oberlin College archives.
Each student was tasked with designing several entries related to colonialist legacies or decolonial practices. We carefully crafted the material for broad dissemination, aiming to provide an accessible, concrete, interactive, visually-engaging site with modules that will benefit faculty, students, and the broader public.
We invite you to use the site in your classes and welcome feedback.
