A revelatory new account of Black innovation in American opera, showing how composers, performers, and critics redefined the genre both aesthetically and politically in the early twentieth century.The inauguration of a “golden age” in Black opera is often dated to 1955, when Marian Anderson became the first Black singer to perform in a leading role at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Yet Anderson’s debut was actually preceded by a rich Black operatic tradition that d...

Signaling such recent activist and aesthetic concepts in the work of Kara Walker, Childish Gambino, BLM, Janelle Monáe, and Kendrick Lamar, and marking the exit of the Obama Administration and the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, this anthology explores the role of African American arts in shaping the future, and further informing new directions we might take in honoring and protecting the success of African Americans in the U.S. The essays in Afr...