In this talk, Kira Thurman investigates the rise of Black Europeans in popular music since WWII. After the collapse of European empires, European popular music industries turned to the musical labor of former colonial subjects to reinvent themselves in an increasingly global and English-speaking marketplace. Interpreting many Black European pop stars such as Boney M or Milli Vanilli as Black Americans, however, transatlantic listeners often failed to recognize the musicians performing in front of them as belonging to European history. How, then, do we account for both the overwhelming presence—and discursive absence—of Black Europeans in modern history? This talk seeks to illuminate how musical producers, performers, and their audiences sought to make sense of—and occasionally reject—the category of ‘Black Europe’ in the wake of a newly emerging post-imperial Western Europe.

About the speaker

Kira Thurman is a highly-sought-after and award-winning historian and musicologist. A classically-trained pianist who grew up in Vienna, Austria, Thurman earned her PhD in history from the University of Rochester with a minor field in musicology from the Eastman School of Music. Her research, which has appeared in German Studies Review, the American Historical Review, Journal of the American Musicological Society (JAMS), Opera Quarterly, and Journal of World History, focuses on two topics that occasionally converge: the relationship between music and national identity, and Central Europe's historical and contemporary relationship with the Black diaspora.

Host

The Institute for European Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies