The Joyful Sounds of Being Your Own Black Self

Abstract

What is Black Boy Joy? Black Boy Joy is a common project, a Black study of unbounded Blackness, the blurring of Blackness, the joys of Blackness, the joy of Black boys. My work speaks to the revolutionary power of Black Boy Joy. Black Boy Joy emerges from the “bubbling” culmination of multiple Black theories and methodologies in the caldron of the Black Radical Tradition. Emerging from the Black Radical Tradition, Black Boy Joy refuses the systems of whiteness and white supremacy by reclaiming Black stories, voices, and identities through the arts and humanities. Black Boy Joy is the quotidian refusal to stay in ones designated “place” and provides a space that gives Black males futures that they want now. As a blurred embodiment of various Black aesthetic expressions, including jazz improvisation, poetry, visual art, and griot culture, Black Boy Joy is a social and spiritual practice of saying no to the terms, codes, rules, and laws of white supremacy that subjugate Black males. Black Boy Joy is revolutionary because it ruptures oppressive social structures that make Black boyhoods socially unimaginable and creates a space they are felt, heard, seen, and matter.