Advanced Topics in Music History Fall 2026- Music and the Colonial Encounter

Catalog description

In the Western imagination, what does the Other sound like? What basis does that sound have in reality? This course considers the sonic, aesthetic, and social changes that occur to musical practices through the colonial encounter , or processes of interaction, conflict, subjugation, and settlement that have occurred between colonizing powers and the cultures they exploit. Beginning with an overview of canonical Western classical works that are built on orientalist tropes, we interrogate both the colonial histories that underpin these works and their musical outcomes in and beyond the West. Subsequent case studies - including exchanges between French impressionist composers and Javanese gamelan, and British rock, American jazz, and Indian classical music - engage how encounters with colonial powers subvert, reshape, and restructure native musical systems. This course consists of lectures, in-class guided viewings and listenings of media that are paired with take-home assigned media, and writing assignments that focus on how colonial encounters manifest in musical systems and in sound as realized. Prerequisites & Notes Prerequisites: MUS 121, MUS 122, MUS 141, or MUS 142