Colonization precipitates in various spheres of social and arts of a culture. This paper investigates the construction of Persian music theory in the twentieth century, the effect of Western musical scholarship, and the challenges of domesticizing the field of musicology in post-revolutionary Iran. The direct relationship between music theory and politics has been explored in other cultures (e.g., Carpenter 1988, Zavlonuv 2020). The study of Persian classical music gained substantial momentum in the mid-twentieth century when several Western scholars and Iranian musicians became interested in this subject. They conducted fieldwork in Iran mostly in the 1960s and 1970s and consequently produced several books, articles, and thesis in German, English, and French (e.g., Khatchi 1962; Farhat 1990, During 1991). A number of Iranians also wrote theoretical books in Persian (e.g., Vaziri 1934; Khaleqi 1938). In the post-1979 Iraniann revolution, musicians confronted various challenges in practicing, and presenting their works, not only in performance but also in musical scholarship. At the same time that musicians faced significant changes to domestic cultural policies, they were also investigating alternative ideas that deviated from Western methodologies of research (Movahed 2004). Drawing from Turino’s (2000) investigation of the concept of “global” and the accelerated neocolonial expansion, I argue that some of the key concepts of Persian music theory influenced by Wetern methodologies should be reviewed in light of the indigenous perspectives of Iranian musicians (e.g., Davami, Saba, Payvar) who independently expressed their understanding of their music and have not been sufficiently studied.

Every December, the Senegalese hip hop cultural association Africulturban organizes the Festival Thiaroye 44 in the banlieue of Dakar. This annual festival seeks to raise awareness of the massacre that took place in 1944, when West African soldiers fighting for the French army as colonial subjects went on strike for not receiving pay and living in poor conditions; the French armed forces responded by killing over 300 of the soldiers. The festival seeks to not only honor the fallen Tirailleurs Sénégalais, but to also raise awareness of the massacre, which remains absent from history books and curricula. The festival involves an opening conference with local intellectuals and politicians, a final concert featuring Senegalese rappers including founder of Africulturban Matador (of WaBMG44), as well as workshops for the Thiaroye middle school and high school where students learn how to honor and commemorate the event through slam poetry and graffiti art. In doing so, the festival seeks to engage young people in learning about Senegalese history, the legacy of colonialism, and its impact on local social and economic development, all while including them in imagining a decolonized future. Though not explicit or intentional, Festival Thiaroye 44 engages several articles within international children’s rights conventions, but these conventions are not cited or referenced. I argue that the inclusion of children and youth represents a uniquely Senegalese interpretation of post-colonial economic development. I analyze this phenomenon based on fieldwork conducted in Dakar in 2018-2019 through a framework of local hip hop cultural production.