ASH Hoffman

Date of Award

2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Zabriskie, Queen

Area of Concentration

Music

Abstract

This project examines why and how, musically, and in creative praxis, I began my journey towards a decolonized, genre-less approach to creation through the process of writing, recording, and producing my first studio album. AMALGAM, the paper, and the accompanying album, aims to assess the intricate relationships and challenges that exist intersectionally between music, creativity, and the world's many oppressive social systems which come as a result of our colonized conditionings. The goal of the praxis and messages explored in this work is to engage in a queering process of our relationships to genre and music as they have been structured in our society. A closer look into this framework clues us into a specific and powerful realization that gender operates almost identically to genre to limit and categorize people and ideas. Such an analysis of topics and application of practice requires an intentional and radical path of methodologies which lie outside our current colonized understandings. In addressing the impacts and intricacies of dominant culture and institutions, avenues of transformation that lie outside of our current colonized structures are necessary to implore. This address calls for real and radical change in action, thought pattern, creation, and nuanced understanding of several kinds of socio-conceptual relations, which I engage in and explain throughout the entire project through various explorations of literature and experiences.

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