Introduction: Talking about the (de)colonial

How do we talk about musical colonisation? How do we talk about this work of talking about it; that is, interrogating what we mean by colonisation and its counter-logic of decolonisation or decoloniality? What can and must we talk about in this particular moment – when talk of decolonisation is at an all-time high, yet without clear consensus and much misuse of the concept? These questions, and the insights that emerged from them, animated the two-day conference Music’s institution and the (de)colonial, convened by Sanne Krogh Groth, Phil Dodds, and Brandon Farnsworth, and hosted by the Division of Musicology at Lund University in early May 2023.

Early on in the conference, we unanimously acknowledged the necessity of decolonisation in music research and practice. We were also aware of the traps and gaps of our common discursive context, a context predominantly shaped by institutions. Some rightly pointed out how institutional talk of diversity, equity, and inclusion ultimately and problematically maintains the status quo. Others questioned the efficacy of decolonial research itself, given the systemic tendency of institutions in education, arts, and culture to reinforce the legacies of what Kofi Agawu calls musical colonisation.

The drummer and the keyboardist walk in resolutely, dressed in black. They stand, turning their backs to each other. After this brief duo introduction, other performers enter the scene. They move awkwardly, like animated figures. Looking from side to side, bodies twisted in strange positions, gestures repeated in loops or scratched out, like the vinyls on turntables at the back of the scene. 

This is a snapshot from the performance, at the 2023 Darmstadt Summer Courses, of Growing Sideways, composed by Jorge Sánchez-Chiong and choreographed by Brigitte Wilfing. In their program note, the artists write: »To step onto the side and feel forward, to grow sideways between the traces of the past and to look back with foresight at a sideways proliferating advance. Suddenly we have the future breathing down our necks. How many steps can we step back?« The two musicians at the beginning are Alfredo Ovalles (keyboards) and David Panzl (percussion), who are later accompanied by Mirjam Klebel (horn). The setting seems to have more to do with dance than music. And yet it was presented here, at a contemporary music festival. 

Salomé Voegelin’s new book, Uncurating Sound: Knowledge with Voice and Hands, is by far her most honest, personal and also most difficult to read. Difficult, in the sense that you need to find the »right« way to read it, in-between academic categorization towers and artists’ desperate search for new sensibilities in a world in deep crisis. Constantly, I found myself stopping to reread and reflect, making my small academic (i-am-so-clever)-notes in the note tool on my impersonal tablet. Simultaneously, I was feeling increasingly uneasy, a gap was growing, and I realised I had to read the book in a completely different way. Horisontally and emphatically. Reading with care.

There is a real sense of »staying with the trouble« and a deep inspiration from Donna Haraway’s book Staying With the Trouble (2016) in Voegelin’s book, which could be said to pay tribute and mobilize Haraway’s method in sound studies. It is a brave attempt, indeed.

Imagine immersing yourself in environmental data as you discover the intricate architectures of environmental sensing that surround us. The Environmental Audiotour presents Helsinki and Vallisaari in the form of environmental data. The narrating voice takes us through different spaces and sites of the past and future: real and imagined stories unfold in unison with elemental forces in the urban environment, from water to air and from land to fire. The narrator draws our attention to the transforming energy and ecological landscapes as we move through different »islands« in the city.

We are crushed to announce that Kaija Saariaho has passed this morning. She slept away peacefully in her own bed, at home in Paris. As her family, we are issuing this as our sole statement, and request the peace of our time of mourning be respected.



In February 2021, Kaija was diagnosed with a glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer, found from the onset to be uncurable and lethal. With characteristically strong determination, she fought daily to both slow its growth and live fully. The multiplying tumors did not affect her cognitive faculties until the terminal phase of her illness; they were located in the area controlling her motor skills on the right side of her body, which led to growing difficulties in walking and talking, in turn exacerbated by ensuing falls and broken bones.

NASA has made it possible for Earth’s musical culture to be evaluated by aliens. The Voyager spacecraft, launched in 1977, contained a golden record that, alongside multilingual greetings and an attempt to establish a common basis for communication, included a mixtape for off-world audiences. European classical music is heavily represented: the selection opens with a recording of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 2 by the Munich Bach Orchestra and is followed by selections from musical cultures from around the world. The American contributions include Chuck Berry’s »Johnny B. Goode«, Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven’s »Melancholy Blues«, and Blind Willie Johnson’s »Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground«. The mixtape has always been a format with which to swagger and seduce, meant to project both front and vulnerability. How, though, might we interpret a sampler from another star system; what might its effect on us be?

Garlanded with copies of the Parthenon frieze, the Sculpture Hall of Lund Pufendorf IAS welcomes a dense crowd softly illuminated with pink and warm lights. Everyone sits quietly, while the pleasantness of the atmosphere merges with an oneiric sound fading in. Soon, the dreamy soundscape becomes sinister, commencing a concert of strongly engaged political music pieces.

Curated by Sanne Krogh Groth and Katja Heldt in occasion of the Night of Culture 2022, Antifascism - Electronic music from worlds on fire greets us with a quote from Rosa Luxemburg: »The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening«. The quadrophonic loudspeaker system surrounding us indeed plays four compositions that could not speak up more powerfully and clearly. Whether in the tradition of the ‘70s or recently commissioned for the event, strong voices emerge through the works of predominantly female composers

James Black owes me an article. Except I’m no longer the one it’s owed to, it’s my successor as editor here at Seismograf, Andreo. Also, it wasn’t one article, but several. Long, elaborate articles requiring many hours of work. The conversation went somewhat like this over phone some two years ago: So, I want to speak to some other colleagues about religion, says Black. That might sound a little dry, I think, and isn’t it a bit much to sign up for, a single Seismograf article can be difficult enough to finish, so an entire series? I hesitate politely, but on the phone, I hear James insisting. A yes leaves my mouth because James sounds oddly motivated, and when James writes, it is usually like a raging fire of indignation and damned clarity: pure critic gold. Three or four articles on music and religion? Yes, please, James, you do that.

When I meet with the Danish Composer Neils Rønsholdt on a scorching summer afternoon in Copenhagen, he has a kind of crackle of excitement about him. He’s just come from a rehearsal for another piece but he’s in town to prepare for the premiere and subsequent two-day run of his new opera, The Last Rites, at the Copenhagen Opera Festival. Normally, Rønsholdt resides in Aarhus where he is an associate professor in composition at the Royal Academy of Music. It is very clear that Rønsholdt is eager to share this work with his audience but until he can he has to make do with me and the question I could generate on the basis of the programme description.

On the twenty-second of June,
At exactly four o’clock,
Bombs were dropped on Kyiv, they announced to us
That the war had begun.

In the Soviet Union everyone knew these lines. One of the few sincere, and at the same time unceremonious songs was created in the first days of the so-called »Great Patriotic War« by the poet Boris Kovyniev. In fact, he wrote lyrics set to the melody of a new waltz, Blue Scarf. In the USSR it was somehow inconvenient to remember that Siniy platochek was the work of two Poles – Jerzy Petersburski (music) and Stanisław Laudan (lyrics). Both versions – Siniy platochek and On the Twenty-Second of June – were sung to us by our grandmothers instead of lullabies, which is why from childhood we knew the exact date of the Nazi air invasion of the USSR.