Composing Apartheid is the first book ever to chart the musical world of a notorious period in world history, apartheid South Africa. It explores how music was produced through, and was productive of, key features of apartheid’s social and political topography.The collection of essays is intentionally broad, and the contributors include historians, sociologists and anthropologists, as well as ethnomusicologists, music theorists and historical musicologists.The essays focus on a variety of musics (jazz, music in the Western art tradition, popular music) and on major composers (such as Kevin Volans) and works (Handel’s Messiah). Musical institutions and previously little-researched performers (such as the African National Congress’ troupe-in-exile Amandla) are explored.The writers (from South Africa, the UK and US) move well beyond their subject matter, intervening in debates on race, historiography and postcolonial epistemologies and pedagogies.