| Abstract | In this essay we describe our work as Chicana and Chicano Studies scholars teaching Latino Cultural Studies to majority students-of-color classrooms. In our courses we examine music as decolonial pedagogical praxis through the use of nueva canción and hip-hop, both musical forms which have political roots and exemplify counterhegemonic movements against cultural imperialism in the U.S. and in Latin America. We begin with the premise that education is a political act and, as such, we draw from creative forms and styles that problematize what decolonial scholars call the “colonial matrix of power” in shaping the Latino subaltern experience (Mignolo, 1991, 2001; Quijano, 2000). Using music as a political and aesthetic expression against empire (Anzaldúa, 2012; Sandoval, 2000; Pérez, 1999), we argue that hip-hop and nueva canción offer students possibilities to critique and delink from coloniality in their everyday lives. Committed to decoloniality as a political, epistemological, and spiritual project, we are intent on creating spaces that value transcultural understanding and solidarity between and across subaltern peoples of the Global North and the Global South, with particular attention to Chicanas and Chicanos and Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. and other peoples in the hemisphere. Musical forms like hip-hop and nueva canción also provide ways to critically explore and engage in decolonial horizons that break silences, disrupt dominant narratives, and create a transformative consciousness among our students, particularly around issues of economic globalization, immigrant rights, cultural resistance, ethnic relations, poverty, and educational inequality in the Americas |
