Beyoncé Is America’s Political And Moral Voice, Even When She Does Not Say Much At All
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There were long moments, for me, during Beyoncé’s The Renaissance World Tour this summer, and also her soul-reviving new concert movie, Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé, where I just fell silent, gawked, unashamed, into space, wholly transfixed by what I was exposed to, in front of me, around me. Other than, say, Prince, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, and Tina Turner, I have never felt energy like this before from the live performance of a musical artist. I would have to point to political leaders far gone and very much present—Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, Nelson Mandela, V (formerly Eve Ensler), Michelle and Barack Obama, AOC—where my mind was so thoroughly blown, my wig so methodically shoved backwards, that I knew I instantly had my life edited, in a profoundly dramatic way, by what was being presented to me as an idea, a vision. In a word, that is called magic.
Moreover, we know the m-word in the doting hands of a Black woman like Beyoncé is called “Black girl magic.” They are not just three words which have been haphazardly strung together with a hashtag in front for social media, or to boost egos or a vague sense of self-worth. No. It is equally a fearless emancipation proclamation and a gripping declaration of independence. Because it is not merely some passing attempt to combat hate and oppression. No. Beyoncé marches, unapologetically, through the rough and rugged political landscape of our America clear she is a woman, a woman who is painted Black, unbought and unbossed. For she is the answer to Sojourner Truth’s pleading question about the role of Black women in the battle for freedom and justice for everybody; and she is also Fannie Lou clutching her purse, with the sharecropper’s strength of her battered fingers, as she sang the sorrow songs of exclusion at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. To make it plain, if we erase Black women from the history of America, we do not have America.
This is why, without question, it is certain it was Black women who made Joe Biden’s presidency happen. He has said so himself. Check the facts: Black women are Democrats’ most legit and loyal voting bloc; for the past five presidential cycles, dating back to 2004, they have appeared at the polls in higher numbers than any other demographic. Indeed it could be argued that this consistent and reliable support is what led to the first Black woman/woman of color Vice President in Kamala Harris, and the first Black woman Supreme Court Justice in Kentaji Brown Jackson. Black women are not only America’s original feminists, as Gloria Steinem has proclaimed, often, but I am not sure if any group fights as hard for true democracy the way Black women have since the very beginning.
However, it has not been easy for Black women, including Beyoncé, her mother, her mother-in-law, my mother, the many mothers whose names we will never know. Because, as Beyoncé sings on her Renaissance album and in the concert movie re-enactment, she, them, Black women, matter-of-factly refuse to allow what they continue to endure to break their souls. As a man, I could never imagine what it is to be a Black woman, but I was raised by a single Black mother, and I know it was no crystal stair for her to duck and dodge the nooses and water hoses of racism and sexism, to be treated, regardless of status, as the mules of the earth Zora Neale Hurston vividly described in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Therefore, to partake in a Beyoncé performance live or on film is to witness the miracle of out-living and out-hustling dreadful madness forever aimed at the mind-body-spirit of Black women, from slave ships and plantations to Breonna Taylor and Cassie. And it also highlights how tired Black women are, including Beyoncé. Because Black women, historically and in these modern days, are not just mothers, or entertainers, or cooks, or voters, but also de facto political organizers and operatives in our families, in our communities, for this nation. They are the ultimate multitaskers of America. Want something done? Ask a Black woman. Want something fixed? Ask a Black woman. Want a #MeToo movement birthed? Ask a Black woman. Want to save America from an insanely tyrannical presidency? Ask a Black woman.
This is the genealogy from which Beyoncé comes. Louisiana. Alabama. Houston, Texas, the city where she was born. You do not get her level of grand accomplishments, or her undeniable evolution, from teenage girl Black-pop group to a solo voice with the unquestionable influence of presidents and prime ministers, without that barbed-wire line of broken-flesh struggle before her, and through the raw, uncooked guts of her everything. Check the facts: Beyoncé is a business and a businesswoman, a mother, a wife, a daughter, a daddy’s girl, a sister, an auntie, an employer, a recipient of tremendous personal heartbreak, a philanthropist, an activist, a very grown woman who has become a global superstar and global cultural force, on her own terms, now on par with, yes, Madonna, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Bob Marley, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Janet Jackson, Josephine Baker, Frida Kahlo, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and The Beatles. To boot, organically, Beyoncé has also figured out a way to be mid-1960s Nina Simone and early-1970s John Lennon and late-1990s Lauryn Hill, too, the new people’s poet with the silver swag. Yet Beyoncé still has to deal, as revealed in her concert film, with those doubting her intelligence and her imagination and her leadership, even those she was paying to make the magic of her tour happen, because she is a woman.
Perhaps it is precisely because Beyoncé is from a marginalized community that she, in her essence, is modeling the kind of political and social leadership America desperately needs in these ugly and polarizing times. I was struck, at the live show and in the movie theater, by the massive multicultural army that showed up to absorb the Beyoncé phenomenon: a rainbow coalition of women and girls, yes, but also those of every race, every culture, every skin color, every body size, every generation, every class and educational background, every ability and disability, and every gender identity. Furthermore, I cannot recall a live show nor a movie theater where so many who were openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender, or non-gender-conforming felt free enough to solely be, without judgment, or fear of violent reprisal to their persons for being who they are.
It could be argued that part of the huge attraction of the queer community to Beyoncé is her embrace of their culture, including dance music—house music, to be specific—something Diana Ross and Madonna similarly nurtured when Beyoncé was but a child. But I feel there is something deeper here, because of Uncle Johnny, the late gay kinfolk Beyoncé cited on numerous occasions in the concert film and on the tour—how important he was to her, how important the Uncle Johnnys of the universe are to us all. They are there within every family, every community, every nation-state, even when some refuse to acknowledge them, even when some desire to injure or kill them, in some form, via diabolical means. Yet Beyoncé chooses to say gay, chooses to say his name, waxes eloquent on his working-class brilliance, rendering him, and they/them—every single they/them—visible in a political blizzard pushing mightily to render mute that community just like it is attempting to render mute Black folks, Latinx folks, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Indigenous folks, women of every identity, poor people of every race, immigrants, the un-housed, anyone considered “other” and thus undesirable.
But Beyoncé does not stop there. If one truly is of the Beyoncé movement—and it is actually a movement—then one gets what she is doing with the concert film, world tour, album: she is spearheading a new way to engage folks, multiple folks, politically, socially. She is not loud, she is not in your face, she is not debate-thirsty. Beyoncé is love, Beyoncé is peace, Beyoncé is kindness, Beyoncé is a healer and a bridge-builder, a sincere and humble coalition-maker; and what Beyoncé is doing is meticulously wrapped in music, dance, costumes, digital displays—it is a political and social justice spectacle set to dope beats. Yet underneath the hot lights is a woman’s care for people—we them people—and there is her autobiography, right in front of us, if we dare to hear/feel/see: commentary about racism, about sexism and the value of the bodies of women and girls; there is the environmental and class concerns, too; there is the middle finger to the sensationalism of our mass media enterprise; and there is an affinity for anyone who is or has been an underdog.
What Democrats and Republicans could learn from Beyoncé is how to bring human beings together for the larger good, how to get messages to followers that empower said followers, not further suck people into the matrix of fear, division, and vicious mudslinging that leads us to nowhere. Beyoncé is America’s political and moral voice, even when she does not say much at all. Because she does not, not an interview here or there, scarcely, past several years. She can have a performance and song entitled “America Has A Problem” and not say anything further in said performance or song because only someone who is an alien superstar would not grasp Beyoncé’s meaning. We do have a problem, plenty, and if we do not look inward and wrestle with our national demons, well—
Or, rather, like James Baldwin said before her, if all of us are not free, then none of us are free. This, to me, is Beyoncé’s message to the people. Power to the people, yes, but the people need love, and significant attention, and a house that feels safe, too, whether that house be America, or that house be the dance music which is the foundation of these most recent political and artistic revelations for her.
Alas, that is why it is ridiculously lame, and classic hater-ism, to try to bully Beyoncé, or any artist, any entertainer, any celebrity, into taking a public stand around the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, reported here, there, everywhere, as I wrote this piece. The queen will speak when she wants to speak, when she feels ready, or not. Just because Beyoncé has, over time, given much obvious thought, and done much obvious reading and researching, does not mean she has forfeited the right to talk about some things and not talk about some things. The oppressed and marginalized can quickly become oppressors and marginalizers when we demand others to jump, or talk, when we say they must. Which is not something—if one eyeballs the film, or attended one of the 56 concert stops, or more, or both, in Europe or North America—Beyoncé is down for: telling folks who they can and cannot be, putting folks in a bag, with convenient labels, like no big deal. This is about a total re-birth, y’all, not same-oh same-oh.
Besides, as made evident in Beyoncé’s works ranging from Lemonade to Renaissance, constantly dumping the patriarchy on women like her, and Taylor Swift, demanding they explain why their concert films are being shown in Israel when they have nothing to do with where and how AMC distributes movies continent to continent, region to region, is missing the point of who Beyoncé has become. My wife and I have discussed this passionately, privately, the patriarchy, and my wife is correct: the pinning onto others who we think they should be is near-sighted, undemocratic, and Lawd knows legions expect women, Black women, to be the mules of the earth, per Zora. Yeah, women, Black women, can make things happen, can fix things, can build and create things, can spotlight things, but are these critics likewise demanding JAY-Z, or Travis Kelce, or Ed Sheeran, or Harry Styles, or Usher, or Justin Bieber, or Tom Cruise, or any given famous man riff, aloud, on a historical beef that has lasted 75 years, regardless if they are prepared to do so, or not, or want to, given how painfully delicate a matter it is?
Keeping it one hundred, I admire that Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are not falling for the bait, nor are they willing to be pitted against each other as women about who is the biggest or best pop diva. But I must say, with all due respect to Taylor and her spectacularly successful tour and concert film, no one in contemporary popular music in America or on this here planet can do what Beyoncé is doing: single-handedly manifesting diversity, equity, and inclusion when she beckons us to gather. Where Taylor’s audience is majority White women and girls, Beyoncé’s is the multi-everybody-everybody beloved community Dr. King dreamed of throughout his short existence. A beloved community where, even for just a couple of hours, at a film screening or a concert, everyone feels equal, special, protected, liberated.
Yes, at the movie theater in Brooklyn and the football stadium in North Jersey where I watched the live show, I shouted, I laughed, I cried, I reached my hands to the sky very very high, as if in a storefront church, and at an insurgent political rally, at the same time. Yes, I felt the floor beneath my skinny ankles shake. Yes, I felt my heart swallow my chest; it was ecstasy, a natural high, a pull to be more, to do more, because of what I was witnessing on that stage in the person of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, a 40-something creating tiny ripples of hope like two Kennedys and an Obama before her. And, yes, I lost myself there, forgetting where I was, a movie theater, a football stadium, whichever. Because I knew this was a remarkable once-in-a-lifetime spiritual trip I was on, one I did not know I needed, until I was there.
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Kevin Powell is a 2024 Grammy-nominated poet for his spoken word poetry album, Grocery Shopping With My Mother. It is streaming everywhere.
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