For Thurman, it began with a nagging question: who, exactly, were the performers of the well-known Belgian band, Technotronic? (best known for their 1989 hit “Pump Up the Jam.”) The group’s vocalist, Ya Kid K, a Congolese Belgian rapper, is absent from the music videos. Instead, they feature Congolese Belgian model Felly Killingi. This case of musical “mimicry” thus sparked Thurman’s search into the layered influence of postimperial subjects in Europe’s high era of disco. 

Her first book, Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms (2021), received major awards from the American Historical Association, the Royal Musicological Society, and the German Studies Association. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Frieze Magazine, and The New York Review of Books, and she has contributed historical materials for numerous orchestras internationally. 

“How has empire transformed European music culture?” Thurman asks, challenging pervasive assumptions about race and belonging in European history.

Using pop charts, recordings, published reviews, and music magazines, Thurman traces a surge of Black European presence in Western European music after World War II. At the same time, she reveals the complicated realities of who benefited from their labor and how these performers were visually linked to, and often conflated with, American Black culture. During Munich’s rise as Germany’s disco capital, producers frequently placed Black performers at the forefront as the public face of the industry, as seen with groups like Boney M., whose male frontman, Bobby Farrell, lip-synced to tracks recorded by producer Frank Farian, while serving as the visual embodiment of the music. Through a nuanced analysis informed by theories of masquerade and mimicry, Thurman untangles transnational histories of belonging and exclusion, as well as the construction and erasure of race.

In addition to her lecture, Professor Thurman engaged with the IES graduate fellows over a breakfast workshop, where she discussed strategies for young scholars to engage in public humanities by publishing articles and op-eds to reach a wider audience. 

If you would like to be a part of our European Studies community as a graduate fellow, please apply by May 11, 2026.