As global music history continues to gain currency worldwide, conference panels and publications are increasingly articulating field-defining questions, beyond the work of contributing relevant case studies. An aspiration to democratize professional music history arguably lies at the heart of these efforts, against the concentration of resources and authority in the hands of those working in wealthy institutions, in imperial (or formerly imperial) nations, and in dominant "universal" languages such as English. Yet, if there is an emerging consensus on the importance of decentering knowledge production internationally, there is less cohesion on how to resist pressure exerted by hegemonic pasts, narratives, and social groups closer to home, wherever "home" might be.

Call this a grounded global music history that proceeds from local discomfort and is most at home with contextually uprooted pasts. Such music histories may center the memories of Indigenous, dispossessed, and racially or religiously oppressed peoples; those of the poor or the untouchable; or those whose lands have been polluted or rendered uninhabitable by climate change, and so forth. Indeed, as global approaches gain traction in musicology, how might we not just include, but recenter discomforting pasts within the "home" practices of global musicology; and how might we critically intervene in the likelihood that uneven power and hegemonic narratives will tend to predominate? Our study group session features speakers whose research and public-facing work give them valuable fresh perspectives on these pressing scholarly questions.

Speakers and topics

Alexandria Carrico, "Listening to Understand: Unsettling Hierarchies of Musical Excellence through Disability Studies"

Daniel Castro Pantoja, "Modernity as Coloniality, Arche-Politics, and Other Decolonial Intimacies: Transmodern Thoughts on Centering Discomfort in Global Music History Studies"

Hedy Law "Just Sound Right: Cantonese Music in the Age of Global Music History"

Pablo Palomino, "Music, Global Frameworks, and Cultural History: Discomforts of a Latin Americanist"

Jessica Bissett Perea, "Toward a More Native Music Studies and a More Musical Native Studies: Indigelogical and Eurological Perspectives on American Music Histories since 1970"

Maria Ryan, "White Adjacency and Settler Moves to Innocence"

Parkorn Wangpaiboonkit, "On Offering Oneself to Music History: Positionalities and Perspectives from Colonial Siam"