Thinking With/About/Through Music as Artful Inquiry: Collaboratively Performing the Onto-Epistemological and Ethical Flow of Inquiring

This essay presents our collective imagination of music-informed artful inquiry. Inspired by the notion that methodology can be a lifestyle choice and drawing on our experiences with collaborative music expression, we discuss three characteristics of artful thinking with/about/through music: transcendency through emotions and embodiment, connectivity for inclusivity and relationality, and resistance for reinventing decolonial beings and ethical relations. Building on these elements—and understanding artful thinking as a mode of inquiry—we attempt to envision thinking with music as artful inquiry guided by epistemological boundary-crossing, a relational ontology, and a commitment to decolonial possibilities.