• Analysing Indian Ocean’s Kandisa: a dialogue with decolonisation

    Author(s):
    Dr. Karishmeh Felfeli-Crawford (see profile)
    Date:
    2021
    Subject(s):
    Ethnomusicology, Musical analysis
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    indian ocean, Music analysis
    Permanent URL:
    https://doi.org/10.17613/0d7t-9e71
    Abstract:
    This article provides justification for the minority scholar trained in “elite” music analysis (my term) to apply voice-leading analysis to rock band Indian Ocean’s fusion number Kandisa. In so doing, I find a meaningful new way to address decolonisation debates in music. Born and schooled in India, and now based in Ireland, I first reflect on recent tensions around music theory’s white racial frame (Ewell 2020; Lavengood 2020) and ask what this means for a minority scholar whose non-luxury training1 in Western art music (henceforth WAM) and its theory has - curiously - placed me on the fringes of music academe. A close reading of Kandisa is presented next, as an engagement with musical minutiae via a language that I argue is far more accessible and meaningful (to me, my fellow Indian friends and colleagues, and the band members themselves) than any “Indian” music terminology. Recognising the potential for this viewpoint to cause a stir amongst ethnomusicologists who have had the double good fortune to train in WAM as well as its Indian counterparts, I recontextualise Kandisa from the decolonial lenses of the work of Tuck and Yang (2012), Kennedy (2016), Kale (2017), Stock (1998), Lorde (1984), Tenzer 2006 and 2011, and Ewell (2020), to name just a few.
    Notes:
    This article was published in Ethnomusicology Forum (Taylor and Francis). The updates to the vocal transcription are included within this revised version, deposited at University College Cork's CORA database.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    http://hdl.handle.net/10468/11960
    Publisher:
    Taylor and Francis
    Pub. Date:
    May 2021
    Journal:
    Ethnomusicology Forum
    Volume:
    30
    Issue:
    1
    Page Range:
    82 - 104
    ISSN:
    1741-1920
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    2 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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