The intercultural composition education program at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa

The composition department at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa (UH) offers an intercultural composition education program that aims to go “beyond the exoticism”. As a self-proclaimed “leader” in the intercultural composition field, this program exposes students to a variety of East Asian cultural expressions and claims to provide a platform of exchange between cultures. An observation of this educational context seemed to me a good occasion to enlighten the process by which people can negotiate cultural boundaries through arts, and discuss questions related to orality and institutionalisation of cultures.
For this meeting, I chose to focus on the intercultural composition course offered at UH, looking at the ways by which students get to know about Other musical expressions. Here, questions related to cultural representation are central. Finally, I will analyse an example of intercultural music composition, giving further insight to the cultural “meaning-making” process as well as the creative process that led to a composition of this kind.