Singing like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms investigates the history of Black classical musicians in German-speaking Europe across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A study of musical interactions and transnational collaborations between Black performers and white Germans and Austrian listeners, the book explores the tension between the supposedly transcendental powers of classical music and the global conversations that developed about who could perform it.

Singing like Germans reveals how listening to music is not a passive experience, but an active process where racial categories are constantly made and unmade.