The cultural meanings of female musical authorship in the late German Enlightenment are reflected in the life and death of Charlotte ‘Minna’ Brandes, a composer, keyboardist, and opera singer. Minna's death in 1788 at the age of twenty-three turned her from composer into a passive, aestheticized object of male authorship.

The “blackwashing” of Beethoven, in endeavours to claim Beethoven's genius as a testament to black accomplishment, has had the adverse effect of obscuring the careers and contributions of actual black composers, including Joseph Boulogne de Saint-Georges, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and William Grant Still.

The life and struggle of Roshan Ara Begum—Pakistan’s first and, to date, arguably greatest singer of classical music— is an instructive example of the complex intertwining of agency, resistance, and resignation in Muslim-identified Pakistan and Hindu-identified India.

In taking “black rhythm” as their subject, some contemporary music studies reinscribe what the sociologists Tukufu Zuberi and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva have called “white logic”: a set of intellectual attitudes, prerogatives and methods that restage the same practices of division central to early musicology.

The concept of Blacksound offers a theory of historical embodiment to trace the ephemerality and materiality of the sounds produced by black bodies within the history of popular music in the United States, and to serve as a complement to discourses of race based in visuality.

As the mail order bride business began to prosper during the 1980s, the phenomenon of Asiophilia also surfaced in pop and postmodern music. Orientalist representations of Asian females found in the songs of Mellencamp, Bowie and Zorn reflect a pernicious racial and sexual stereotype.

The aesthetics of Winehouse's vocal gestures and racial mimicry highlight the politics of what we might call sonic blue(s)face culture, a vocal phenomenon pioneered by black and white female entertainers in early twentieth century popular culture.

Seeking to go beyond music’s proven capacity to contribute to specific political causes, musicians have explored how aspects of their practice embody democratic principles, adopting particular approaches to compositional material, performance practice, relationships to audiences, or modes of dissemination and distribution.

The familiar old world of classical music, with its wealthy donors and ornate concert halls, is changing. The patronage of a wealthy few is being replaced by that of corporations, leading to new unions of classical music and contemporary capitalism.

Against the backdrop of the longstanding conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra of Daniel Barenboim reflects how widely publicized musical peacebuilding initiatives may have less value at the grassroots level than initially perceived.