Topic: “Joy and pain: A crossroads of beauty, knowing, and being”
Associate editor: Dr. Joyce M. McCall
The group Maze—also known as Maze featuring Frankie Beverly, is a soul and funk band founded in Philadelphia, in 1970 by Frankie Beverly. While Maze’s music reached a wide range of listeners, their music persists as an iconic soundtrack of the Black experience—there is probably not a Black family function (i.e., baby shower, birthday, graduation, wedding, reunion, or cookout) or Historically Black College and University gathering that has not included the music of Maze in its song rotation. Maze released a total of 11 albums, nine of which achieved gold status. Joy and Pain, the group’s fourth album, was a masterful work that highlighted the highs and lows of the human condition. From songs such as “Changing Times” to “Family” to “Southern Girl,” Maze constructed a sonic space to celebrate, address, and encourage efforts of identifying and overcoming life’s challenges, including but not limited to systemic obstacles that sit on the horizon.
In the song “Joy and Pain,” Maze nuances joy and pain as codependent variables of our personal and social selves, temporary and sometimes ephemeral, and salient features that assist in the manifestation and cultivation of self. Maze’s lyrics (i.e., “joy and pain are like sunshine and rain”) illuminate an existential tension akin to Du Bois’ description of his double consciousness theory. Historically racialized individuals and communities are aware of how their personal and social selves can be shaped by how they see themselves and how the world sees them otherwise.
Like that of many of their contemporaries, Maze’s music also engaged and inspired other systemically marginalized communities to not only resist erasure and oppression, but to also celebrate their beauty, knowing, and being, three salient features of the human condition. These features correspond with three key pillars of philosophy (i.e., ontology, epistemology, and axiology), which address fundamental questions about one’s existence, knowledge, and values.
The aim of this special issue is to welcome historically racialized scholars whose work and inquiry center on the lived experiences, innovations, and inventions of historically racialized people to share their work. This issue also invites non-racialized scholars who have partnered with historically racialized individuals to also submit their work—sustained collaborations, prior to this call, are of particular interest. Lastly, and in keeping with the aim of their music, we encourage those submitting to consider how Maze might articulate the joy and pain of historically racialized folk in their work.
Deadline Submission for Special Issue: November 15, 2025.
For more information, please download the flier.
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