Do Black People Actually Hate Musicals?

Who says Black people don’t love musicals?

Well, according to the algorithms over the past week — both digital and universal — a lot of people, including us.

Through conversations with friends in person and on social media, and through TikTok’s curated feed, this point came up repeatedly over Juneteenth weekend. But a counterargument was equally prevalent; pointing out that musical theater has roots and branches throughout Black history and culture, as do so many other aspects of American pop culture. Those roots extend to nearly a century worth of musical movies, which disprove the above theory; Black people really do love musicals.

On Sunday (June 22), Bob The Drag Queen posted a YouTube video in which the popular Drag Race veteran posed the question “why do Black people hate musicals?” to both a roundtable panel of commentators and folks out in the real world, a la “man on the street” segments. In the video’s intro , Bob recalls encountering experiences in which friends, family, neighbors, and the like declared their distaste for musicals, joking that a Pew Research poll found that “97% of Black people in America believe that Broadway musicals are… ‘some white people sh*t’.”

While Bob’s joke is clearly meant to be a lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek generalization, there have, however, been a number of commentaries on the double meanings of “the Great White Way,” including in The New York Times and Broadway trade publication Playbill, noting the overwhelming lack of representation in traditional productions. Even one of the most successful production of the past decade, Hamilton, went out of its way to cast almost exclusively people of color as a rejection and indictment of that standard.

There have even been informal, yet still insightful polls pointing to the belief that a majority of Black folks at least claim to dislike musicals, often citing all the usual concerns. They say the songs break their immersion in the story, that it’s “unrealistic” for people to “spontaneously” break out in song and choreographed dance when confronted with strong emotions, or that the style of music is simply not appealing to their personal sensibilities.

These concerns aren’t exclusive to Black folks; The Ringer noted a couple of years ago that, as Hollywood musicals proliferate, with studios returning to the old standards that once supported the entire industry, their marketing departments are going to great lengths to hide the fact that films will feature characters singing and dancing. Consider the rollouts for films like Mean Girls, Wonka, and most relevantly here, The Color Purple. There seems to be a fear that if the musical aspect is played up in trailers, no one will go see the movies.

But here’s where that fear falls apart; people — especially Black people, as we’ll see in a moment — absolutely LOVE musicals. They are an indelible part of our cultural history and one of the ties that binds us together. The Wiz is often cited as one of the cherished family viewing traditions by nostalgic commenters on social media apps, as is Dreamgirls. Both movies made stars of some of their featured companies; a young Michael Jackson’s performance is widely considered a standout of the former, while one could argue that Jennifer Hudson’s infamous, viral “spirit tunnel” would never have happened without the latter.

How many of us grew up on the animated films of the Disney Renaissance: The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King? Yes, those films and other staples of the ’90s might have featured traditional Broadway songwriting, but when it came time to release single versions of their hit, show-stopping songs, Black singers like Peabo Bryson (Aladdin‘s “A Whole New World” with Regina Belle and “Beauty And The Beast” with Celine Dion) and Vanessa Williams (Pocahantas‘ “Colors Of The Wind”) were tapped to give them a soulful flair.

Disney Plus has a whole documentary about the cultural impact of A Goofy Movie, with its New Jack Swing-inspired pop star Power Line voiced by Tevin Campbell; Donald Glover’s Atlanta dedicated a whole episode of its final season to the same concept (arguably providing the inspiration for the more official version released this year). And even though the recent musical version of The Color Purple fell short of commercial expectations, those who did go see it, loved it; audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it an average grade of “A”, and 92% of filmgoers gave it a positive score according to PostTrak.

More contemporarily, Wicked not only became the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2024, with similar audience responses, but it was also the subject of pop-cultural memes and trends that saw poor Cynthia Erivo deluged with fan reproductions of her “Defying Gravity” “warcry.” The song was nominated for a BET Her award, and Erivo’s performance earned her Best Actress at that award show; clearly, Black folks loved Wicked.

Another musical that audiences — mainly Black ones — loved: Sinners. Perhaps that characterization of the ninth-highest-grossing film of 2025 surprises you, but along with a riveting crime drama and a truly incisive horror film, Sinners is also one hell of a musical. As author and culture critic Jason Pargin pointed out on his TikTok (months after the film’s release, mind you, proving its staying power for all kinds of audiences), Sinners is structured as a musical; he notes that the film’s centerpiece, showstopping musical scene hits right at the hour mark — just as it would in any other musical.

As with many stereotypes — maybe even most of them — it seems there isn’t much to this one other than the stereotype perpetuating itself through its repetition (and perhaps some folks just being unwilling to do a little self-examination). After all, nearly all of us have at least one song rattling around in our heads from a musical stage show or Hollywood film. For me, it’s “Good Morning” from “Singin’ In The Rain,” but I knew the song long before I’d ever seen the movie. For as long as I can remember, its infuriatingly catchy chorus had been used as a jingle for the local hip-hop station’s Big Boy In The Morning radio show. If you ever thought Black people don’t love musicals, consider this your wake-up call.