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 North African contributions to musical and musicological projects that spoke against or circumvented colonial knowledge, and the material effects of both musicological knowledge production and musical policy on the local population.