Editorial Introduction

This special issue on music, race, and ethnicity was conceived by musicologist Judy S. Tsou when we were cochairs of the AMS Committee on Race and Ethnicity, and then supported and developed by the Journal's editorial team and Editorial Board. It has been more than two years in the making. The issue aims to affirm the centrality to musicology of scholarly conversations about race and ethnicity, while also asserting a central role for musicology in exploring the crucial issues of our time—a vital concern for both younger and more established scholars working on these issues.

The articles presented here were subject to the Journal's regular peer review, editorial oversight, and procedural guidelines rather than a curatorial process. They offer both implicit and explicit critiques of musicology's engagement with discourses of race and ethnicity, while confronting the historiography of the European musical tradition, even hinting at a retroactive creolization...