Recent calls to confront the epistemological and ontological biases upon which normative American music education is based are plentiful in our discipline. In this presentation I will share my attempts to engage these issues through a freshman music ontology course called ‘Speaking of Music’.

What counts as music, who says so, in what settings, and by what parameters are favorite starting points for any world music class. But they are equally relevant to all types of musical training (in a composition, appreciation, studio lessons, etc.) as they forefront the social and aesthetic boundaries that each sub discipline creates. Designed for first-year undergraduate students, this class deploys novel assignments that engage the peripheries of the music concept, translation of sound into visual, tactile, or choreographic modes, multi-species sonication, and the social and biological positionality of listening. This course is an attempt to mark the unmarked structures that guide university music education and open such conversations to students. It infuses ethnomusicological and sounds studies ideas into a foundational first year experience. The class aims to reassess what counts as music rudiments (Ewell 2020), to embrace multiple epistemologies (Robinson 2019), to confront ideological supremacy (Kajikawa 2019, Brown 2020), and to foster a more inclusive music curriculum. The class is an experiment… with successes and failures to be reviewed and shared for those interested in new pedagogies. This presentation will outline the class goals and assignments and will also share some strategies for politicking such a course into the undergraduate music curriculum.

Christian Utz (2010) foresaw Asia's growing role in the future of classical music and emphasized intercultural value of East Asian art music. In his 2021 book Musical Composition in the Context of Globalization, Utz challenges cultural essentialism and advocates for the ontology of a “hybrid, fluid, and transformative constitution of all contemporary cultures in the global age.” This paper explores his framework by proposing the concept of intermusicality, which emphasizes the dynamic, cross-cultural exchange of individual musicians' interactions, transcending rigid cultural boundaries of nationality or tradition. Drawing on Ingrid Monson’s work, it challenges the fetishization of traditional music as an element of authenticity in Korean culture. Music, rather than being confined to cultural or stylistic borders, is viewed as a collaborative space where individual musicians exchange ideas, sounds, and gestures, constructing meaning through their intersecting identities.

This paper explores intermusicality in contemporary Korean music through case studies of female composers. While earlier generations, such as Chou Wen-Chung and Isang Yun, struggled with East-West dichotomies, younger composers reject nation-state-based cultural frameworks. This presentation examines how Chin’s Sheng Concerto (2009) challenges stereotypes of traditional instrument through her collaboration with sheng player Wu Wei, and how Kim’s Ghost Geomungobot (2018) reimagines ancient Korean geomungo in digital space, transcending boundaries of nationalism and Koreanness in contemporary music. Additionally, DoYeon's Existence (2023) redefines gayageum performance in transcultural context, deconstructing its traditionality. Through these works, this paper highlights the aesthetic of intermusicality, offering a dynamic negotiation between tradition and innovation and expanding the contemporary music canon.

Between 1970–1990, the Festival of Political Songs took place annually in East Berlin, the former capital of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany). During these events, artists, activists, and scholars from dozens of countries around the world descended on the city for a week of cross-cultural exchange and connection. While ostensibly functioning as a site of free and unmediated interaction, all forms of cultural and political activity occurred within an environment that relied heavily on notions of political, racial, and geographic difference. With the majority of activities occurring just a few hundred meters from the lived, physical realities of Berlin Wall, as well as within the broader philosophical and ideological nexus between the East and the West in the twilight of the Cold War, this paper takes the festival as stage upon which a variety of bordered expressions were articulated. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, this paper examines the various ways that borders were enacted, reified, and challenged on musical stages in the former capital. Rather than arguing that the festival operated as a either a site of political contestation or as a device for political propaganda of the East German state, this paper aims to frustrates the binary logic of Cold War geography by considering the musical manifestations of both realities and the ways they interacted within both the real and perceived experiences of borders during the Cold War.