Riding on dissonance, playing off-beat: A jazz album on joy

Abstract

Abstract Inspired by jazz’s epistemologies and structures, this article was written as a Black liberatory jazz album on Black Boy Joy. Threaded through musical tracks, Black Boy Joy is conceptualized as a Black spiritual Life Force and a liberatory emotional expression that refuses the anti-Black curriculum antagonizing Black boys. Black Boy Joy centers Black joy through desire-based refusal and reclaims Black subjectivities and futures through Black aesthetics. Black Boy Joy is the quotidian refusal to stay in one's designated "place" and provides a space that gives Black boys futures that they want now through Black liberatory fantasy. Through fantasies and desires, I demonstrate how vital improvisation and dissonance is to creating Black liberated futures. Through the good mess of jazz improvisation, I invite the audience to (re)imagine, (re)explore, and linger with these concepts within a musical Black Study.