Music is not just music. Musical Cosmology is a unique space created of two artists. The result is more than its parts. Both artists bring their presence, their musical background, their whole life history, their social culture, their knowledge, their worldview. I believe that all these parts can be heard from the music. Music is not made in an empty space, it is made in this world, in the present time, and every part of history and being affects the result. Music made together is something bigger, indescribable.
Colonial mind affect all of us by unconscious and conscious thoughts and ways of acting. It has many names: white supermarcy, racism, sexism, idealization of productivity. Colonial mind materializes in music in notes, harmonies, rhythms and lyrics. My approach starts from the assumption that no one’s mind is free from colonial thought patterns, and that these patterns affect the musical working process, and can be heard in the music created together.
In my practise, I want to explore how power relations materialize in transcultural working, and break them away or go beyond. Dreaming is radical. Let’s dream more equal future for all the living beings. This approach stems from radical decolonial thinking.
Afro-feminist approach challenges the hierarchies of knowledge. Minna Salami (2020, 11-42) talks about different knowledge in her book Sensuous Knowledge. According to Salami we have been taught to believe that all worthy knowledge is rational and logical. Salami proposes that knowledge is also something that we can access through the arts and their connections to the emotions, senses and embodied experiences. Art suits explain reality because it captures reality from inside out. (Salami 2020, 12-13.) In my artist research, I want to expand the understanding of knowledge and knowledge systems.
Intersectionality is part of the decolonial approach. “Colonised people are diverse and experience oppression differently. It would be ironic to challenge one form of domination while unintentionally reifying other forms of oppression.” (Tamale 2020, 39)
Salami, Minna. (2020). Sensuous Knowledge. Amistad. New York.