Research Shorts: Rethinking ‘musical excellence’ from a decolonial perspective

This week I spoke to Professor David G. Hebert about a collaborative research article, ‘Rethinking ‘musical excellence’ from a decolonial perspective: Disruptive autobiographical experiences among doctoral scholars’ published in the International Journal of Music Education. The project reflects international perspectives from emerging or recent doctoral students: Lulu Liu, Sergio Garcia-Cuesta, Laura Chambers, Sergej Tchirkov and David himself.  

The project came out of a doctoral seminar delivered across several continents; the course considered both decolonisation and the philosophy of education, and the group began a project interviewing each other to learn from the shared biographical reflections.  

In the piece, the authors consider four questions:  

1. What was your gateway into music and how did the music learning-tradition that you were exposed to affect your development as a musician?
2. In what ways was the concept of “musical excellence” a part of your (early) development as a musician?
3. How does the concept of “musical excellence” impact how being an “artist” is defined by you and people around you?
4. How did this perception of “what is an artist” affect your musical path (and even how others perceive your career)? 

David explained that the work found endorses ‘approaches to education that foster openness to diverse forms of musicianship – including non-western and Indigenous traditions, folk and popular music and electronic music genres, and studies that place more emphasis on originality with less focus on competition in virtuosic and standardised performances’. Their argument is that all of this promises ‘to strengthen the overall vitality and sustainability of music in higher education’, an intriguing argument to reflect on in terms of all music education practices too. 

David reflected that ‘our research is especially relevant to higher education leaders, school administrators and policy makers. He explained ‘We concluded that it may be necessary to redefine “musical excellence” and take different approaches to evaluation that reward originality, while aiming to reduce the role of sports-like competition in music education.’ They argue:   

‘Our disruptive experiences collectively show how reflections on personal development can help teachers to understand a need to transform the world, which requires not only adapting existing systems and structures to become more inclusive but transforming them into structures that potentially would not have excluded in the first place.’ 

The authors are Lulu Liu, a China-trained pipa performer and Australia-trained scholar who received her PhD from University of Sydney in 2019; Sergio Garcia-Cuesta is a PhD fellow and Lektor at Denmark’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory; Laura Chambers is a classically trained flutist who works as a soloist, orchestral and chamber musician in a variety of musical genres and a PhD candidate at York University, Canada; Sergej Tchirkov is an accordionist and PhD candidate at University of Bergen. He previously was educated at the St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory. David G. Hebert is a full Professor at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences.   

Read more:

Read the article (free, no paywall).

Learn more about David’s recent book: Comparative and Decolonial Studies in Philosophy of Education.   

Interview by Dr Sarah K. Whitfield – Research Manager for Music Mark