The Black Pacific: Music and Racialization in Papua New Guinea and Australia

Abstract

Music has been critical to the alliances and affiliations that have connected black-identified artists and activists from North America and the Caribbean with indigenous artists and activists from Australia and Papua New Guinea since as late as the end of the 19th century. This article sketches out those connections, asking what kinds of social formation this ‘Black Pacific’ has represented. Following Howard Winant, I argue that though affecting a relatively small number of people in places that are generally remote from western metropoles, nevertheless, this story of transcultural identification is crucial to understanding the trajectory of racialization as a component of modernity.¹