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The Black Opera Research Network announces the inaugural issue of our Open Access journal, the Journal of Black Opera and Music Theatre (JBOM)! This issue offers a timely exploration of opera’s entanglements with legacies of empire. Emerging amid global debates around decolonization and the shifting cultural politics sparked by the Black Lives Matter movement, authors investigate how opera and music theatre both inherit and challenge colonial structures of knowledge, representation, and power.
Featuring scholarly articles, practitioner reflections, and critical conversations, the first issue traces how artists and researchers are rethinking opera and music theatre as spaces for memory and critique. Contributors examine topics ranging from institutional racial capitalism and African operatic genealogies to queer reimaginings, ancestral listening practices, and technological strategies for preserving endangered performance traditions. Whether analyzing Yorùbá òrìkì as foundational operatic practice, probing the contradictions faced by Black composers within Eurocentric institutions, or exploring listening as decolonial methodology, the contributors collectively argue for opera’s potential to reconfigure how stories are narrated, embodied, and sonified.
JBOM establishes a platform for global perspectives on Blackness, opera, and music theatre, inviting readers to rethink not only what opera is, but how, where, and for whom it resonates in the wake of empire. Join the conversation by submitting your work! The deadline to be considered for our second issue is 15 March 2026.
