SIMM Panel: Decolonial and Justice-Oriented Social and Community Music Practices

How do community-based music-making programs engage in a meaningful way with diverse cultures and their representatives, authentically reflecting Indigenous values and perspectives, and those of other formerly colonized nations?

With sensitive planning and design, and inviting the leadership of Indigenous community leaders, Elders, song-keepers and others, community-based participatory music projects can become a gateway through which to challenge dominant cultural frameworks and centre local knowledge and traditions, energize community agency and promote individual empowerment.

Who leads these initiatives? Whose music is being made? Who decides? What forms of teaching are most powerful and authentically rooted? How can those “from outside,” with potentially useful skills offer their help and resources in a respectful, supportive way that listens, responds and does not impose? And how can such projects challenge and resist colonial dynamics, and connect with the rediscovery and strengthening of traditional stories, dignity, spirituality, and solidarity?