In Singing Like Germans Kira Thurman tells the sweeping story of Black musicians in
German-speaking Europe over more than a century. Thurman brings to life the incredible musical
interactions and transnational collaborations among people of African descent and white Germans
and Austrians. Through this compelling history she explores how people reinforced or
challenged racial identities in the concert hall. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries audiences assumed the categories of Blackness and Germanness were mutually
exclusive. Yet on attending a performance of German music by a Black musician many listeners
were surprised to discover that German identity is not a biological marker but something that
could be learned performed and mastered. While Germans and Austrians located their national
identity in music championing composers such as Bach Beethoven and Brahms as national heroes
the performance of their works by Black musicians complicated the public's understanding of who
had the right to play them. Audiences wavered between seeing these musicians as the rightful
heirs of Austro-German musical culture and dangerous outsiders to it. Thurman explores the
tension between the supposedly transcendental powers of classical music and the global
conversations that developed about who could perform it. An interdisciplinary and transatlantic
history Singing Like Germans suggests that listening to music is not a passive experience but
an active process where racial and gendered categories are constantly made and unmade.
