Resuena Abya Yala: Otherwise Practices in Bowed Strings Learning and Performance

Abstract

Throughout Abya Yala (the Americas) various communities of string players are engaging in otherwise (Crawley 2017) practices of learning through musicking (Small 1998). I have been able to create and sustain strong relationships of solidarity with two of these communities in Colombia and the U.S.A., the Visionaries Ensemble for Visual Functional Diversity (Ensamble Visionaries), and the Bridges Musical Arts Youth Organization (Bridges MAYO). Our collaborations center on democratizing access to oral and academic practices present in musics from Afroindigenous cultures from Colombia and the Western conservatory tradition. The stories, materials, resources, media and what I call academic+oral (Robinson 2020) methods resulting from our collaborations, are accessible through the Resuena Abya Yala (RAY) website and the “RAY supporting materials” listed in the Appendix; these are free bilingual harvests from the present research. Through applying the relationality central to el Vivir Sabroso in my learning and teaching, I bring together bowed string players who are sounding their identities and transcending the binary of academic versus community-based dynamics (Rodríguez 2018), through a transversal approach to power that I argue could be perceived as resistance within decolonial praxis (Albán Achinte 2009).