Symposium: Music and Dutch Coloniality

On 31 October 2024 we are organising a symposium on Music and Dutch Coloniality.

Music and Dutch Coloniality

This symposium brings together researchers active in the Netherlands working on the role of music, sound, and media in Dutch coloniality. The concept of coloniality is employed here to call attention to the forms of knowledge, social organisation, and political power that supported, but has also in many ways outlived, the formal condition of colonisation. Music is frequently understood according to categories that fit such colonial thinking, such as modern/primitive, artistic/functional, oral/literate, religious/secular, sound/noise, etc.
In this symposium we discuss how such and other conceptual categories have played a role in musical thought and politics in the history of Dutch coloniality. Our aim is to bring together a network of scholars working in this area, hoping to nurture further conversations and research on this topic in Dutch music scholarship.
This event is organised by the IMPRODECO research group, an ERC-funded project at Utrecht University investigating the role of jazz and free improvisation in the long process of decolonisation of the Netherlands. As part of the event, we will present some preliminary results from this research project.

Speakers will include:

Emily Clark (University of Amsterdam)
Rachel Gillett (Utrecht University)
Marek Susdorf (University of Groningen)
The IMPRODECO team: Koen Gijsman, Reïnda Hullij, Loes Rusch, Floris Schuiling and Thomas Overdijk.

If you wish to attend this event, please send an email to f.j.schuiling@uu.nl