Voices and Sounds across Empires: the Power and the Glory with Fleur Barron and Kunal Barron as Praxis to Postcolonial Reexamination on Classical Stages

By Michelle Jiaying Li

In conversations of finding the shared space between Asia and Asian America, or more broadly, returning to Edward Said’s idea of Orientalism, where power creates a dichotomy between Eurocentric classical art superiority and the preordained exoticized “other”, we begin to see how the remnants and renewals of postcolonial hauntings and empire-building holds us all together. Singaporean-British mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, now a Grammy award winner, explains,

“We often tend to feel that colonialism is a historical process that is relegated to the 19th and 20th centuries and in relation to the West and its expansion to various directions. But, of course, it is very much an ongoing global reality.” 

Indian American pianist Kunal Lahiry and Fleur Barron’s 90-minute program, “The Power and the Glory,” on February 22, 2025 in Bowker Auditorium at UMass Amherst explored a wide range of postcolonial complexities and identities in classical music. Through an intentional curation of musical and poetic performance, they bring together works from across time and space, with discursive intentions, on the same fabric of empire. In doing so, they challenge each audience member to examine their own relationship and positionality in colonial history and ongoing realities. Through a critical lens, well researched interpretations, and the excellent technical command of the music by the duo, the Power and the Glory becomes an evening of enriching and beautiful musical experience.

I came in with little background in classical music, carrying the childhood puzzle of wondering whether the piano lessons my mother enrolled me in made me “more Chinese” or “more American”. This principal instrument to Western classical music continues to secretly connect the childhood between me and many of my Chinese American peers. That night unraveled this either/or thinking and guided me to the root of these questions.

Lahiry and Barron’s outfits on stage were not what I had pictured for a traditional Western classical music presentation. Barron wore a two-piece set of silk with a floral pattern; an outfit I could imagine wearing to a formal occasion as a statement of heritage and self-expression for myself. Lahiry’s bleached platinum brows mirrored my own as a way to queer their entire look. Immediately, I felt connected to the duo onstage. For the first time, I felt more kinship to the artists at a classical concert hall than the older regulars at such performances. I was excited to see how Barron and Lahiry would bring pieces of themselves into this space, in the ways classical musicians are often unable, and how they could allow music to evince queerness and diasporic inheritance.

Their sartorial choices were not the only things that resonated. In our class, Barron shared how both she and Lahiry’s upbringings and lived experiences shape the way they navigate socio-political conversations in classical music spaces as artists. Their deep introspection on colonialism and empire through the lens of classical music is heightened by their proximity to, and time spent in, places shaped by colonial legacies such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and India. Returning to classical music spaces in the U.S. and the U.K., where empires are often purported as a past and irrelevant series of historical events, Barron and Lahiry are impelled to ask questions and find answers. Like Barron, my upbringing took me through cities shaped by colonial legacies across Asia, where my parents’ work commitments and our family ties frequently relocated us. Throughout my upbringing, both within my family and in the broader communities around me, I have often noticed how classical music and ballet were framed as routes to “proper poise” and proximity to the West, while traditional folk music and dances were invoked to claim one’s non-classical heritage. This resonance deepened my engagement with their program, adding an extra layer of care and intentionality around how I, and others, experienced the performance. 

The energy in portions of the audience also reflected the shifting atmosphere brought about by the messaging of this concert.  Clusters of younger students later engaged in a vibrant conversation with Barron and Lahiry in the Q&A session. I wondered whether those expecting a “typical” classical performance found the concert to be transgressive or too unconventional. I soon realized, however, that Barron and Lahiry’s meticulous performance would be revelatory to listeners from all walks of life as audience members take away what each of them is able to from the performance. Their work defied the assumption that deeply political art must be alienating or “preachy,” thus granting institutions an excuse to stay away from it. Instead,  Barron and Lahiry curated a beautiful repertoire full of emotional generosity and beauty. 

Looking at the audience around me, I kept thinking about who was not in the theater to take up space and the difference it might have made had they been, and how this particular performance would be different from the next one on tour because of the makeup of the audience members. I thought about who was showing up to support composers and performers who challenge colonial narratives in classical music. Live performance persists in the age of new media not only because of what happens on stage, but the collective experience of those in the room as the music echoes across. In this particular performance, we had a role not only to consume, but we were also invited to participate, feel, and respond, and that, in itself, felt like a disruption of the rigid power structures embedded in classical spaces. 

Artistic programming that seeks to challenge who is represented on stage, or the authenticity and accuracy of the representation, often risks stopping short at celebrating and spotlighting toleration in multiculturalism or “diversity” without questioning the dominant narratives that shape them. I came in expecting exposure to music and voices of resistance outside the Western classical canon, but the Power and the Glory went further. Barron and Lahiry cleverly and intentionally performed pieces that are part of the Western canon and placed them right next to living composers’ works they commissioned and are coming directly from communities that have been historically exoticized or simplified by the dominant Western classical world. This act of critical juxtaposition creates friction and recontextualizes the canon. I did not need to be well-versed in classical music to feel the care in Barron and Lahiry’s well-researched performance and how they embodied different pieces depending on their histories and purposes, with some pieces meting out power, others evoking resilience and rewriting imagined narratives. The program was effectively rich and intricately thought out, connecting postcolonial complexities through sounds and performed emotions.

Barron and Lahiry structured the program into different geopolitical sectors, some works, for example,deftly addressing the French exoticism of “Eastern music.” One piece that struck me deeply was a Chinese folk song named Fengyang Flower Drum Song that was performed last. The melody was familiar. Barron’s nasal tone, rolled R, and the specificity of the delivery transported me right back to my grandma’s kitchen where she would hum the same tune. Hearing that melody performed with reverence under the spotlight, but also accurately delivered without losing its whimsy for a classical audience, yet without the trappings of exotic fantasy, was the highlight of my night.

Some reviewers of the Power and the Glory have noted how they worried the performance would be too polemical for audiences. Some even tried to exoticize the work because of the performers’ and composers’ background, forcing this grounded, radical program to fit into an old box. The joy and reflection I witnessed leaving the hall that night proved such concerns are unnecessary and undermine the very intentions of the program. 

The Power and the Glory reimagines what classical music can hold, what it can sound like when empire is not the default key signature. It transforms hegemonic narratives and classical music spaces, once stages for imperial and colonial triumph, into sites of transgression, care, and reclamation. In Bowker Auditorium, across songs in over a dozen languages, Barron and Lahiry show that when art confronts colonial legacies with rigor and openness, it can transform the stage and those who gather around it.

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