About

Black music, with its numerous genres and styles, is one of the most important musics in American history. Rap and hiphop are currently two of the world’s most popular genres, with local varieties in virtually every country on the planet, while jazz has arguably been America’s most historic and significant homegrown music and musical export. Black Music, in Theory (BMiT) focuses on Black and African American music writ large. In centering the analysis, composition, criticism, history, interpretation, performance, and theory of this music, BMiT also foregrounds previous work done on Black musicians and composers. Our intent is to foreground Black voices with this journal, while inviting everyone to the fold. BMiT welcomes all!

In addition to providing this important new publication venue, we at BMiT wish to problematize how our mainstream academic music journals, and mainstream scholars, have treated Black music in the past. Too often, in order to see work on Black music in these journals one needed to strip the music in question of its Blackness, its humanity, in order to present it on the main stage of American music theory and musicology. Thus BMiT acts as something of a counterpoint to those mainstream journals while helping them become better versions of themselves. 

BMiT benefits from a rich heritage of prior scholarship by pioneering Black writers and thinkers. From Eileen Southern’s The Black Perspective in Music to Samuel Floyd’s Black Music Research Journal, among others, there has been a vibrant tradition of African Americans publishing scholarship on Black music. However, for nearly a decade, since BMRJ shuttered operations in 2016, there has been a void for Black-led scholarship on Black and African American music in journal publications. We are excited to fill this void and proud to honor these rich traditions with Black Music, in Theory.