Taylor Howard

Taylor Howard is a PhD student in Ethnomusicology at the University of Colorado Boulder. As a classically trained clarinetist, her intersectionality as a woman of color who participated in European art music and consumes rock music has been frequently challenged, what she “should” study or music she “should” listen to, particularly by her Black peers. This struggle has manifested into examining the consequences of Black conservatism on alternative culture and rock music, breeding feelings of rejection and isolation from inter-communal conflicts, generational trauma, and assimilation to Whiteness. This rejection of Blackness, including popular music aesthetics, has removed generations of Black youth from their cultural capital, dismissing rock as “White music”. Howard wants to investigate alternative music and the culture’s healing nature to reconnect isolated Black youths to their authenticity without parallel association to the manipulated image of Whiteness in popular music, as exemplified by Black rockers past and present.

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