During the past 18 months students at South African universities have called for free, decolonised and Afrocentric education. While the first part of the call is clear to all, the other two are worth investigating in more detail. What does the call for decolonisation and Afrocentrism mean generally, and what are the implications for tertiary music education or a music journal that carries the term ‘Africa’ in its title and scope? ‘The Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa (JMAA) [...] is an accredited, internationally refereed journal that aims to combine ethnomusicological, musicological, music educational and performance-based research in a unique way to promote the musical arts on the African continent.’ Originally the term decolonisation meant the ‘process by which colonies become independent of the colonizing country’ . The term referred to the political process of gaining independence only. However, it is now being used in a way that conflates this meaning with the ideas of postcolonialism. This term, too, was initially used in a purely political sense to describe ‘the historical period or state of affairs representing the aftermath of Western colonialism’ . However, it ‘can also be used to describe the concurrent project to reclaim and rethink the history and agency of people subordinated under various forms of imperialism’ . During the period following decolonisation ‘previously subjugated individuals sought to assert control over not only territorial boundaries – albeit ones carved out by the imperial powers – but also their language and history’ . This latter meaning is the one the student movement seems to apply to the idea of a decolonised education. A manifesto from the student group Inkqubela active at the South African College of Music, University of Cape Town, calls for a ‘deep and continuing discussion on what it means to be a performing arts campus in an African Country’ . However, the two aspects – political independence and independence of thought, history and culture – are intricately linked, and fall together in the students movement’s idea of an African or national South African identity. Yet at the same time the search for this identity reveals the impossibility of defining what is authentically African or South African, or of going back to this mystical authentic state. Both concepts, that of history and that of identity, are therefore questioned by some postcolonial scholars:

中文翻译：

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歌唱非洲大陆

在过去的 18 个月里，南非大学的学生呼吁免费、非殖民化和以非洲为中心的教育。虽然电话的第一部分大家都很清楚，但其他两个部分值得更详细地调查。对非殖民化和非洲中心主义的呼吁一般意味着什么？对高等教育音乐教育或标题和范围中带有“非洲”一词的音乐期刊有何影响？'非洲音乐艺术杂志 (JMAA) [...] 是经认可的、国际认可的期刊，旨在以独特的方式将民族音乐学、音乐学、音乐教育和基于表演的研究结合起来，以促进非洲音乐艺术的发展。非洲大陆。最初，非殖民化一词的意思是“殖民地独立于殖民国家的过程”. 该术语仅指获得独立的政治过程。然而，现在它的使用方式将这种含义与后殖民主义的思想混为一谈。这个词最初也用于纯粹的政治意义，用来描述“代表西方殖民主义后果的历史时期或事态”. 然而，它“也可以用来描述同时进行的项目，即在各种形式的帝国主义下重新审视和反思人民的历史和代理权”. 在非殖民化之后的时期，“以前被征服的个人不仅试图控制领土边界——尽管是由帝国列强划分的——而且还试图控制他们的语言和历史”. 后一种含义是学生运动似乎适用于非殖民化教育理念的含义。活跃在开普敦大学南非音乐学院的学生团体 Inkqubela 的一份宣言呼吁“就在非洲国家成为表演艺术校园意味着什么进行深入而持续的讨论”. 然而，这两个方面——政治独立和思想、历史和文化的独立——错综复杂地联系在一起，并在学生运动关于非洲或南非民族身份的想法中落到了一起。然而与此同时，对这种身份的探索揭示了不可能定义什么是真正的非洲或南非，或者回到这种神秘的真实状态。因此，一些后殖民学者质疑历史和身份这两个概念：