This paper defines transcultural practice as an approach to music education rooted in colonization. Through several vignettes, the authors illuminate stories in which they and others engaged with “world music” and “multicultural” experiences in music classrooms that still encouraged an hierarchy and privileged colonial musical practices and repertoire. Transcultural practice names the act of engaging in non-Western music pedagogy and curriculum through a White gaze, inherently preserving power in White traditions and tokenizing music that falls in the ”multicultural” category.

While the intent behind “world music” may have been good, the instructional outcomes were harming. The first set of vignettes in this paper offer ways in which harm occurred or may have occurred in the lived music education experiences of the authors. Later in the paper, the authors use a method they call counterfactual history inspired by Saidiya Hartman’s critical fabulation. Through this method of storytelling, the authors retell their vignettes with alterations of what could have happened if these experiences occurred through anticolonial thinking and teaching. While the stories are not true in what actually occurred, they are ways of knowing and understanding what could be in an anticolonial world, which has yet to exist in the United States.  

While we believe our efforts toward representation in our music classrooms are genuine, our choices often fall short of this goal because of how deeply our thoughts are influenced by colonialism. It is challenging, perhaps impossible, for many music teachers to fully understand what anticolonialism could look like because we are so distanced from it. This paper is an invitation to (literally) rewrite our history and our experiences to illuminate the possibilities of a music education field that is decolonized, representative, and nurturing to the music of all people.

I wish we could rewrite history. We acknowledge that rewriting stories of trauma and harm to explore positive possibilities in music education is not in itself healing. However, I am inspired by the idea of rethinking our past experiences to write the future. Practicing teachers are always looking for practical strategies for implementing larger, research-based concepts in their classrooms. Furthering belonging-equity-representation in the music classroom is no exception. However, to do this authentically and in a way that is non-harming is very challenging for many teachers in colonial spaces. It requires deep reflection upon our own experiences and understanding. Rewriting our own stories, as the authors so beautifully modeled in this paper, is one way we can engage with our past to make better, more informed choices in our future.