Giving Voice to Africans in Musical Arts Education Discourse

Abstract: African music educators have been on a journey of indigenization, closing the gap between community arts experiences and school arts. However, although African music educators have advocated for indigenizing the musical arts curriculum, entanglements in western colonial art education models hinder designing a thoughtful indigenous curriculum and silence postcolonial voices in African schooling. My purpose is to analyze Ghana's political moments that have informed the increased interest in African arts expressions in schools. Using Kwasi Wiredu's "conceptual decolonization" notion, I outline how western music education models depart from African worldviews, notions of being, values, and knowledge. I advance three claims to support my argument that indigenizing the Ghanaian musical arts curriculum encourages music educators to embrace the complexity and breadth of African soundscapes, approaches to music-making, and the importance of African voices in arts education.