ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the potential of the perspectives of black scholars working on black musical topics. Black, white, and other scholars are similarly positioned to achieve some kind of work in black music criticism; one can all fashion a cultural poetics specific to scholarly and personal productive biases. The lack of black scholars in musicology and other related fields has not gone unnoticed in recent years. Journals such as The Black Perspective in Music, Black Music Research Journal, and the Journal of Black Sacred Music were created to address the gap between populist interest in black music and its scholarly study. Recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education declared that enthusiasm for jazz, rap, and other popular music styles had reached fever pitch in the academy. That silence is directly linked to the lack of black scholars in the academic music disciplines.
