Societies across the world are currently facing new sets of what can be called “Global Challenges.” These challenges include climate change, intra-ethnic/regional wars, economic, social and racial crises necessitated by the aftermath of slave trade, colonialism, apartheid and capitalism. Ethnomusicologists have made significant impacts in mediating social, ecological, and political crises facing people through music research. However, ethnomusicological approaches (including the so-called Applied Ethnomusicology) have been problematized as they tend to reproduce what Samul Araújo and Cambria (2013) call “forms of symbolic violence”—structural inequality, top-down power relations, and vertical knowledge structures.

How can (Ethno)Musicological research mediate contemporary global crises, particularly among marginalized communities and troubled societies? Drawing cases from projects like the “Palmwine Music and Environmental Sustainability” in Ghana, the “African Art Music Commissioning Project” in Nigeria, “Creative Mediation” in Uganda and the “Wits Festival Study” initiative in South Africa, this roundtable explores emerging approaches, practices and the potential of (ethno)musicological works in mediating social, environmental, political and economic crises. These projects provide insight into practices, approaches, challenges and prospects of (ethno)musicological research in contemporary Africa. Ultimately, this roundtable shares models for how (ethno)musicologists could work /do research with marginalized people while mediating/responding to issues of racial and social justice, decolonization, and social transformation in contemporary times—without reproducing “forms of symbolic violence.”