Caribbean Popular Music: Complexity and Education

This article reflects on the teaching of Caribbean popular music in higher education, and proposes a complex approach that integrates its cultural, social, and aesthetic dimensions. It is based on the idea that these musical traditions embody a distinctive form of thought rooted in orality, syncretism, improvisation, and corporeality-categories that allow musical creation to be understood as both knowledge and sensorial experience. The study highlights the need to rethink university models dominated by Eurocentric paradigms that have relegated popular knowledge and oral practices to marginal positions within academic curricula. Drawing on theoretical contributions from Bakhtin (1987), Freud (1990), Lévi-Strauss (1964), Lacan (1977) and Morin (1990, 2005), as well as on ethnomusicological research (Manuel et al., 2009; Quintero-Rivera, 1998; Orovio, 1992), the article examines Caribbean music as an epistemological and pedagogical device capable of transforming modes of teaching and learning. The guiding question explores how university music education can acknowledge the epistemological complexity of Caribbean traditions and translate it into relevant pedagogical strategies. It concludes that the inclusion of these repertoires in higher education fosters critical thinking, creativity, cultural memory, and recognition of diversity, thus consolidating to a pedagogy grounded in mestizaje and complexity.

Keywords:
Caribbean popular music; higher education; complex thinking; syncretism; university curriculum; university teaching; pedagogical reflection