Racialized Ornament in the Exotic Musical Imagination: Reflections on Framing and Decoloniality

Abstract: This essay uses the idea of ornament to work towards re-imagining long standing biases in music teaching and scholarship. Focusing on issues of race and gender, Bhogal explores how Western philosophy has tended to marginalize ornamentation or decoration through negative descriptions that invoke an objectified exotic other. Drawing on both sonic and visual examples from Western classical music and Indian classical music, this essay challenges decorative gestures traditionally viewed as superficial and meaningless. The range of examples includes rare sound recordings by Ustad Imdad Khan, Coimbatore Thayi, and M. S. Subbulakshmi, as well as compositions by George Frideric Handel, Maurice Delage, and Maurice Ravel. Ornament serves as a catalyst for de-colonizing approaches where inter-cultural and inter-epistemological dynamics are privileged as models for teaching and research.

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