About

This is the first ever fully Black composers’ initiated website, a resource site on the lives and ideas of living contemporary Black concert music composers.
For creative music making people, music is our oxygen. The website is to share this music with public for arts access, from creative artists to others for the purpose of sharing music. WE musicians are in solidarity that living raises within us a collective unity that our music was made to bring joy, introspection and to make congregations and communities.
We talk often of our purposes grounded in the pride of cultural heritages and to rid our work from the position of victimization, as artists have to mechanize attention to this music by action and creating sustainable support systems to keep the music alive and in the public arenas of cultural access. We are grateful to all the many musicians who share with us over these years to make music happen in open public spaces with audiences to lift spirits and make people have joy in life.
Composers are involved in a life of raising notes into songs, symphonies, operas, chamber settings to resemble life’s experiences creatively. That’s what we do. Without the music there is silence, and music making is the sound of the life of a living planet. We share music to give lift to life. 

Composers of Color is a collective, group of colleagues of working  composers  brought together to discuss, explore the creative conditions of our music in the marketplace, academy and concert world. The main purpose is to provide collegial support, advise and to bring visibility, and institutional partnering to the programming, public exposure, understanding, study and performance of new music creation. We also believe those of us in the arts and humanities have a tremendous responsibility to provide direction and training of young people today. Committed to mentoring, outreach, expanding the base of sonic literacy, our  group is inclusive of composers, creative artists, educators, university and community administrators, who too are committed to the visibility and support of this kind of music programming.   

Brought  into action, April 27, 2013
Boston

One of the purposes of  our meeting was to function as a strategic planning session for a sustainable  series of events focusing on the future programming of concerts, symposiums, publications, sharing and resource gathering,  connected to scholarly information  and collegial base support of our efforts to create  new music. We also felt it needed to be initiated by us, creative musicians for our cause, not any institution.

But, we thought it ” smart” to invite “administrative heads and doers”

first, to the table who through their expertise and associations can help to put down a sustainable track of events. And so a draft mission statement was proposed, meant to be  amended at the first annual meeting…

And we remember the famous 1969 summit at Indiana U, that the book Black Music in Our Culture ( 1970) and The Black Composer Speaks( 1978)were published which both serve as the landmark works that help to chart our challenge forward.

Thus we crafted a meaning and mission statement forward….