All of the “what” that Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., shows that he knows in Who Hears Here? On Black Music, Pasts & Present is of enormous value.1 His essays move seamlessly through discussions of a wide range of music and musicians, cultural sites and sensibilities, genres and generations, and authors and art forms. This virtuosity, however, may obscure at first glance what I consider to be the equally important achievement that emanates from the “how” that he knows and the ways he deploys that way of working. The ideas, evidence, and arguments in this book make extraordinary contributions to scholarship and civic life by prodding scholars and cultural critics to conduct our work in a manner that is contributive rather than competitive, that rests on commitments to conversation rather than conversion, that transcends the narrow disciplinary confines and conventions of academic musicology, that encourages us to keep open and...

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