Uneven Worlds, New Minoritizations, Intersectional Privilege: Questioning Different Kinds Of ‘Global’ In Musical Transmission

This essay considers diverse applications of the term ‘global’ in higher education music pedagogies across unevenly-calibrated playing fields in different classrooms across geo-cultural territories, and different geocultural voices within the same classroom. Particularly, I question motivations for self-cultivation and assumptions about cultural canons, as well as musical and educational doxa, from the perspectives of transnational East and Southeast Asian participants. Often, their encounters of an idealised ‘Global North’, ‘Global West’ or even ‘New Global Self’ can lead to surprising articulations and expectations superficially parsed as ‘politically conservative’ – due to both insufficient/uneven decolonisation and the presence of post-critical, post-decolonial pragmatics. In trying to find a common ground for meaningful conversations between parties whose education journeys have been wildly different and unequally made, I push for grounded and co-curated learnings via intersubjective interrogations of how diverse lived experiences, structural privileges and conscious investment in one’s own personal development can lead to the same shared musical moment in the classroom. I look for collective and care-sensitive extrapolations from these shared moments into broader insights on deconstructing systemic 'difference, commonality and intersectionality in empathetic and community-centred ways.