How does the rich hermeneutics presented by mugham creativity become decolonial? First, many interpretations of the music and its texts directly challenge previous Soviet labels and categories. As they perform salvaged repertoire or speak about Soviet changes, musicians seize the chance to address the colonial past. They dismantle the Soviet canon and articulate with eloquence how their traditions were frozenand erased. Mugham performance is not only hermeneutical but very affective, and the sheer inseparability of what is cognized and sensed, of what is thought and intuited, creates a world for emerging subjectivities that depart from Soviet colonialist understandings. Indeed, this fusion of hermeneutics and affect reveals how mugham musical experience is based on ontologies that are indigenous through their connection to Islam. Understanding them, moreover, means stepping outside Western academic frameworks that underpin what Anibal Quijano (2000) refers to as the coloniality of knowledge
