Abel Marcel Calderon Arias and Hannah Bates reflect upon the roles of dialogue and listening, both with one-another as teacher-student, intellectuals, researchers, musicians and friends, and with a wider circle of interlocutors on their individual research and musical paths. Through their reflections, they engage with ideas of insider-/outsider-ness, orality versus literacy, and “official” versus erased narratives, and the parts such issues play in applying decolonization to practice.