‘When they tell me no, I pass through between the n and the o and keep going’: Community music as a space for epistemic disobedience and locus of decolonial option

This article explores the case of a Puerto Rican project named Taller Tambuyé, which challenges the patriarchal norms historically embedded in bomba music. Traditionally, Eurocentric gender ideologies confined women to singing and dancing, excluding them from drumming – the central musical element. Taller Tambuyé subverts these norms by creating an inclusive space where women actively engage in all aspects of bomba, particularly drumming. Grounded in Latin American decolonial theory, the study explores how community music can serve as a site of epistemic disobedience, disrupting colonial hierarchies of knowledge, gender and power. Data were collected through participant observation, semi-structured interviews with facilitators and participants, and content analysis of the initiative’s performances. Findings show that the initiative fosters inclusive participation and promotes self-empowerment, emotional healing, feminist solidarity and cultural sustainability. Triangulated data allowed for a thematic analysis that unearthed four themes: delinking from the coloniality of gender; balancing tradition; sowing decolonial options; and engaging in decolonial action. The study reveals that by delinking from colonial epistemologies, Taller Tambuyé provides a platform for decolonial options and decolonial action, as participants, facilitators and leaders contest and transform inherited norms and to reimagine bomba as a space of cultural resistance and redefinition. Ultimately, the research suggests that community music can align with tenants of decolonial theory and prompts epistemic disobedience that may turn into decolonial action.