Musically Creolizing Subjects: Re(envisioning) world music education

This paper explores possibilities for constructing creole subjects through world music education. Creolization results from the “fusing and mixing of cultures forced to cohabit together to render something else possible” (Walcott, 2009, p. 170 citing Hall, 2003, p. 193). As cultures fuse musically, our identity shifts. We become creole subjects through the encounters we experience, particularly, Walcott (2009) posits, in highly diverse urban spaces. The mobile nature of cultures is intrinsic to world music. My participation in an Ewe ensemble in Toronto demonstrates that cultures travel musically. The question then becomes: when cultures travel, who or what is refigured or remade and what becomes possible after the encounter? I posit that these encounters affect all parties; people become creole subjects—subjects constantly affected by their continuously changing cultural environments. In this paper, I think about this idea from a utopian perspective. I find thinking in this manner particularly useful in thinking about the future. In many ways, I feel we are mired down in academia with discussions of race and the “crisis of raciology” (Gilroy, 2000, Chapter 1) and that it might be quite productive to think beyond. I begin by arguing that there is the potential for world music education to be a colonizing project. I look specifically to Said (1993) and Thobani (2007) to inform my thinking on this topic. From there, I explore what might happen when an encounter facilitated through world music education occurs and the impact that this encounter could have on the way we define the category of the human. Finally, I think about what might occur after this encounter and redefinition take place.