Publicly funded schools are supposed to serve everyone equally in egalitarian, liberal democracies. In this paper we claim that school music ensembles fail, on the whole, to adequately reflect current socio-demographic patterns in both Canada and the United States. From a postcolonial perspective we attempt to problematize, with reference to political philosophy and educational theory, some of the fundamental issues of representation, autonomy, essentialism, and freedom as they relate to school music ensembles. (Contains 11 notes.)