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Copyright

Fatima Lahham;

Published On

2025-04-30

Page Range

pp. 123–150

Language

  • English

Print Length

28 pages

4. Improvising Text

Historical Performance and a Decolonial Imaginary

  • Fatima Lahham (author)
Chapter of: Improvising Otherwise: A Decolonial Feminist Approach to Improvisation in Early Modern English Culture(pp. 123–150)
This chapter asks how Emma Pérez’s concept of the ‘decolonial imaginary’ could become a creative tool for the musician and improviser to listen to unheard histories. Through historical explorations of early modern theatre practices, this chapter proposes an imaginative approach to contemporaneous musical texts, exploring where the spaces for improvisation and imagination might be. This chapter offers readings into the English music theorist Thomas Mace’s creative processes (1676) and into some of the improvisational possibilities opened up by musical scores based on divisions on a ground, such as ‘Dido’s lament ‘(Henry Purcell, c.1688). The chapter ends with a call to engage our own imaginations in interactions with both history- and music-making.

Contributors

Fatima Lahham

(author)
https://fatimalahham.com/

Fatima Lahham (b.1993) is a musician and researcher with interests across musical improvisation, feminist methodologies, early modern historiographies, and music and healthcare. After studies at Oxford University and the Royal College of Music in London, she received an AHRC studentship to support her PhD research at the University of Cambridge. Since then she has held academic positions at the Royal College of Music and Royal Holloway, University of London, and is currently employed as a researcher at Nordoff & Robbins, the UK’s largest music therapy charity. Fatima performs widely as a recorder player across baroque music, Arabic music and various improvisatory settings. Her solo album 'bulbul' (2022) has been followed by several singles and she also works as a community musician.