Includes bibliographical references (pages [101]-114) and index.”From Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins’s 1879 musical Peculiar Sam to Lynn Nottage’s 2021 musical MJ, the ‘Black musical’ does not get the credit it deserves for sustaining the genre we know and love. This introductory book is devoted to representative African-American perspectives in musical theatre from the literature of slavery and freedom, 1746-1865, to the contemporary period, offering the reader case studies of what the ‘Black musical’ is, how it works, and why it matters”–An anti-racist approach to the study of culture : the Black musical as a mode of inquiry — ‘Way over Jordan’ : bondage and freedom in Peculiar Sam (1879) and Choir boy (2012) — ‘Everything reminds me of you’ : memory and rememory as narrative techniques in Shuffle along (1921) and Shuffle along or the making of the musical sensation of 1921 and All that followed (2016) — ‘Home’ : initiation rites and other ‘rites of passage’ in The Wiz (1975) and Passing strange (2008).