Taking a stand
BEYONCÉ’S REFUSAL TO SHRINK HER BLACKNESS MADE HER COACHELLA SHOWING REVOLUTIONARY
Aquarter into Beyoncé’s triumphant charged showing at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival came a particularly poignant moment.
With the pop star floating high above the crowd via a hydraulic crane, Nina Simone’s mournful version of Lilac Wine poured from speakers as two muscular dancers were intertwined in movement, a subtle nod to the fact that her April 14 Coachella debut came as Simone was being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, USA, more than a half-century after Lilac Wine was released.
After Simone’s vocal faded, Beyoncé reemerged onstage to lead the 100 dancers, singers and musicians backing her through a joyful “swag surf” — the title of a dance inspired by Fast Life Yungstaz’s similarly named 2009 hit. No doubt only a very specific constituency of the Coachella audience, as well as those watching at home, were aware of the dots Beyoncé was trying to connect.
Twenty years into her career, Beyoncé continues to break new ground, and her billing at Coachella was no different as she became the first black woman to headline the festival. Thus, Beyoncé played directly to her black audience, with every element of her show steeped in cultural meaning that showed a singer not just elevating her craft but going through great lengths to pay homage to those that came before her — a bold approach from a performer whose every move dominates the pop cultural conversation.
And Beyoncé’s steadfast determination to bolster her own audience
rather than extend a hand to a new one has elevated her to near mythic status. Considering that the stages at Indio’s Empire Polo Club have long had a reputation for reflecting the tastes of its largely white audience — it took nearly 10 years for the festival to so much as have a black headliner, and that was Prince in 2008 — Beyoncé could have just played it safe and stuck to crowd-pleasing hits.
Instead, she took a risk and built a visually grand set immersed in blackness — a performance about educating as much as it was spectacle. And what was best for the world, Beyoncé thought, was to celebrate the black art that has long influenced popular culture despite its architects — especially the female ones — not always getting proper due from white America.
“Beyoncé was not the first black woman Coachella could have gotten to headline. They could have called Janet [Jackson], they could have called Missy [Elliott]. Black women have often seen their work dismissed and are rarely recognised as masters of their own craft,” offered Candice Benbow, the writer and theologian behind the Lemonade Syllabus, which applied an academic lens to the singer ’s defiant 2016 album.
Themed as an homage to the spiritual experience and rich culture of homecoming celebrations at historically black colleges and universities, Beyoncé spent nearly two hours tearing through her discography while unpacking the black musical history that has informed her artistry.
Chopped and screwed beats from her native Houston, the brassy horns and energetic bounce music of New Orleans, traditional hiphop flourishes, dancehall and the Afrobeat rhythms pioneered by Fela Kuti were worked into her biggest hits, that with the aid of a spirited marching band, turned the main stage into a jubilant celebration of black art.
That Beyoncé continues to eschew pop star conventions in favour of specificity comes as little surprise to anyone who has followed her career.
Her lore can be boiled down quite easily: child prodigy managed by her business savvy father and styled by her mother leads chart-topping girl group Destiny’s Child, breaks out solo, marries rap king (Jay-z) and becomes international pop royalty revered for her athletic showmanship and audacious anthems of female empowerment.
Yet recent years has seen her toy with the notion of pop stardom as her celebrity increasingly transcended her music. Her latest work, such as the aforementioned Lemonade and 2013’s self-titled “visual album” — both released on her own terms with moves that disrupted tradition — have shown a singer more interested in crafting revelatory work than chasing pop perfection.
Beyoncé’s refusal to shrink her blackness has yielded some of her most celebrated work, not that anyone tuned into the Grammys or pop radio could tell. We are in a time of R&B and hip-hop prominence, yet in the past decade, Beyoncé has been just one of three black female singers to land a No 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 as well as to top the album charts as a lead artist.
And when she lost the Grammy for album of the year to Beck in 2015 and to Adele last year, it reignited a conversation about how black women are rewarded for their craft (she would have been the first black woman to win the honour in nearly 20 years).
“Her performance didn’t have to be the one that she did. She could have done anything and we would have screamed and said she slayed us because she would have,” Benbow said. “To centre our experiences — particularly in this divisive moment that we’re in — was jaw-dropping.
“She showed the world that for as much as they love black culture, they can’t value it without valuing us.”