Doug Friesen Reflects on Anti-Colonial Music Education Practices

May 2026

Douglas Friesen, a teacher and musician, works in public education, both in classrooms and as a consultant. He has also taught post-secondary and additional qualification courses for educators. “My background is in public schools. However, I've learned in the last few years that what I've been most interested in is bridging this gap between school music and community music.” 

His current research focuses on sound and listening pedagogies, critical practitioner research, and collaborative inquiry. He also promotes a liberatory pedagogy, which empowers students and brings music from outside of the school system into that space. He works with teachers, students, musicians, and community members across Canada and Brazil, using listening and sound as tools for creative engagement and community-building.  

As Doug was teaching and then educating teachers, he realized that the music taught in schools was most often far removed from the music the children were listening to in their communities and daily lives. “One of the tools [used] to bridging that gap was…sound and listening pedagogies [by] asking students: What do you listen to? [And] how do you hear the world?" Doug invites his students to take the lead in guiding their own learning and centering their own stories and cultures in his classes. Doug is striving to redefine the colonial Western-centric notion that North Americans should lead the way by allowing Brazilian culture to inform his lessons.  Doug hopes that his collaborative research with educators in Brazil will contribute to challenging entrenched North–South power hierarchies in research, theories, and practice. 

One composition created with the students in Rio de Janeiro was inspired by waves. "Some of the students talked about wave sounds. One student made [a] wave movement with their arms then they made a whole wave soundscape, and we decided, with the teacher, to shape and compose those wave sounds to go into a song they were practicing in class." 

As an Internal Research Fellow, Doug hopes that in the future, organizations like LCMC will make use of their institutional power and resources to support communities running outside of these institutions. He hopes that resources will flow into spaces where music making is valued and will aid in activism and well-being, especially in educative settings. To learn more about Doug, visit soundmuseum.ca or follow @soundmarker on Instagram.