I met the musicological titan, Guthrie “Guy” Ramsey, Jr., at my very first American Musicological Society conference in 2007 at Quebec City. Ramsey sat on Charles Atkins's presidential plenary panel on the topic of race and ethnicity, one of many convenings on the topic since then. Although I hadn't fully settled on being a professional musicologist at the time (I was still in my MA program at Catholic University), when I heard Ramsey speak, I felt a familiarity, a likeness that I did not experience as the norm at this mostly white academic music conference. (Ramsey was also my most direct link to trailblazing Black music scholars Eileen Southern and Samuel Floyd, Jr., whose work I had encountered during my MA studies). It was clear to me that I was witnessing an intellectual giant, one who also spoke with a voice of comfort, self-awareness, and authority, with a delivery that...

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