My dissertation focuses on musicology and musical policy in colonial Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, and their connections to race, ethnicity, gender, colonial ideology, and anti-colonial disruptions. Specifically, I look at how the French constructed the North African racial and ethnic landscape via the study and representation of its musical genres and, in turn, how projects of knowledge production, preservation, and renovation in indigenous music bolstered colonial narratives and supported the exercise of colonial power. I also investigate the disruptions that occurred when North African subjects refused to "fit" these narratives or, indeed, when they themselves participated in musical and musicological projects that spoke against or circumvented colonial knowledge.