Reparative Public Musicology: Empowering and Centering Community Knowledge Production through Counter-Storytelling Practice

Recent scholarship contesting notions of “legitimate” knowledge in musicological discourse reveals the deeply ingrained and exclusionary structures of white supremacy in the discipline. Notably, musicologists Rachel Mundy and Matthew D. Morrison show how musicology’s grounding in racist biological determinisms profoundly shapes the discipline and its membership and discourses.1 Music scholars Danielle Brown and William Cheng note how the discipline’s epistemologically violent histories and practices inflict emotional and psychological harm upon music scholars of color and their research subjects.2 Many of these same scholars have made explicit calls to dismantle these problematic structures of knowledge production and the broader institutions that support them. I contend that public musicology has the potential to respond meaningfully to these epistemological issues; however, many of the field’s initiatives inadequately seek to promote “the results of recent research and discovery in the field of musicology. . .”3 Accordingly, musicologists most frequently engage the public through preconcert lectures, mainstream broadcasts, popular publications, social media platforms, and other public media. While these initiatives make music histories