The recent South African student movements calling for 'decolonized' university curricula and campuses are the most audible and visible symptoms of the failure to transform the country's higher education system since the democratic dispensation of the early 1990s. Specifically focusing on the role of music scholarship, practice, and departments within South Africa's higher education institutions, this paper discusses the implementation of socially aware and critically engaged music research in a historically white university. It does so through the lens of a new institute for music practice and research that is committed to challenging the prevailing Eurocentric cultural hierarchy within its host institution, encourages meaningful interaction with the South African arts, and is informed by decolonial thought. The author writes from the perspective of a researcher who has been intimately involved in the direction and governance of the newly opened institute, and has witnessed the various institutional frustrations and barriers that have obstructed the institute's progress. The paper concludes that the transformation of embedded institutional cultures of exclusion depends on transforming institutional structures in which academic disciplines are practiced. Research institutes could be pivotal in effecting such change.