Composing While Black

“Composing While Black is a brilliant collection of essays on the Black presence in contemporary classical music.”
– Kofi Agawu

“Composing While Black helps us shed light on a major gap: Why does contemporary music appear so white? The book provides a comprehensive account of outstanding Black composers, some of whom also live in Europe.”
– Carola Bauckholt

“This brilliantly illuminating survey of twenty-first-century Afro-diasporic composition testifies to the countervailing forces of identity and difference. The modes of art-making that the editors place under the heading ‘Composing While Black’ are, in fact, a teeming, ever-expanding universe of musical possibility, one that resists, absorbs, and transforms immense pressures. Composers are seen both as self-governing individuals and as figures within far-flung, intricately networked communities: this dual perspective honors the inward-outward ardor of human creativity.”
– Alex Ross

*Composing While Black* opens up unique new perspectives on contemporary Afro-diasporic composers who were or are active between 1960 and the present, a period that has thus far been largely ignored by research, concert programming, and journalistic coverage, particularly in Europe. This interdisciplinary collection of essays explores opera, orchestral, chamber, instrumental, and electroacoustic music, as well as sound art, conceptual art, and digital intermedia, presenting Afro-diasporic new music as an intercultural, cross-generational space of innovation that offers new themes, stories, and identities.

Bilingual edition English

Translated by Harald Kisiedu, Jessie Cox, & George E. Lewis

contents

The second edition will be released in the fall of 2026 and is available for pre-order now. Free shipping within Germany.