Decolonising music theory

This research project critically examines the dominant position that western classical music theory holds in the field of music theory and evaluates the impacts that this lack of diverse perspectives has on music scholarship, music education and musical cultural practices. It further investigates alternative music theoretical perspectives from diverse musical practices including a variety of popular, folk and non-western musical practices. The research questions seek to deconstruct how the institutional dominance of western classical music theory has been (and continues to be) legitimised, to identify the limitations and blind spots of western classical music theory in relation to representing, conceptualising, analysing, interpreting and producing musical practices, and to identify affordances of alternative theoretical perspectives that can address these limitations. This research project uses social semiotic methods for critical discourse analysis, multimodal analysis and semiotic analysis. The data consist of music theoretical texts as well as other texts through which knowledge of musical practices is constructed.