Today’s blog post has nothing to do with sports. In honor of black history month, today’s blog is a little class is in session moment about Beyoncé and country music.
I grew up in a town where about 10 radio stations worked, and 3 of them were country music. I was raised on country because I was raised in the country. Country music is a uniquely American music genre, because at its core it describes a uniquely American experience: good ol’ small town USA. I’ve gone through periods of my life where I tried to separate myself from country music, and there certainly are some artists I won’t listen to anymore because of the things they’ve said or sung (Don’t let the door hit you on your way out, Toby Keith.). But no matter how hard I try there is nothing that hits for me like country.
(I will never be a cool mom. Sigh.)
Although I feel like I belong in country music, it doesn’t belong to me: it belongs to the South. I didn’t grow up eating fried chicken or collard greens, and I’ve never been to Nashville. The lyrics, the sound, the instruments, the dances, the twang all belong to the Bible Belt. Country music is a product of the South, but it has also shaped external opinions of the South. Country music as an export of that region has everyone else believing that only racist, white, undereducated people live there.
You know who else lives in the south? Black Americans. Almost 60% of all black Americans live in the Southern region of the United States. There is a fundamental discord between the idea that country music represents life in the south, but doesn’t represent the lived experiences of black Americans. Oftentimes the lyrics of country songs are exclusionary of minorities at best, and aggressively racist and threatening at worst. There is a genre that exists to describe life in the south and it’s racist! What the actual hell!
Also, I’m not going to go all Ken Burns on people here and tell you the history of country music (but you should! Look it up!) but let’s just say that its deepest roots come from music sung by slaves. So let’s not pretend that this music isn’t black.
Enter our Queen. Beyoncé is from Houston, a fact that I think a lot of people forget (because we think that people from the South are uneducated and “backwards.”… say that out loud to yourself after learning who lives there). By recording a country album, Beyoncé is saying: this genre is worthy. The music of the South is important. The people of the South are worth listening to. Country music is black music, and deserves to be recorded by sophisticated, intelligent, beautiful and successful artists. Black Americans from the country deserve to be seen and heard in the country music industry.
Her decision to move into the country space has had an immediate effect on country, and people who listen to it. The internet is blowing up with videos of queer people and people of color entering their “hoe-down” phases. They are reveling in the joy that is country music, some for the first time.
I love country music. I think it is comforting and finger snapping in a way no other genre quite gets, and if you are going through a breakup… let me tell you there is a country song for that. This music should be for everyone, and Beyoncé is making sure that everyone knows there are no limits to her influence, and her power to shape a powerfully exclusionary cultural narrative. There is room for everyone in the Beyhive, and if you haven’t listened to the new tracks, wyd.
All hail the Queen.
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Written by Skyler Espinoza
Photo Credit to Variety
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