Juneteenth – A Month in Black Arts
I’m a BeyHiver. Wellllll, I’m on the lower end of the BeyHive spectrum because I don’t threaten to kill people if they come for Beyoncé, but I do attend her concerts whenever she has them. Over the last three years I’ve been to The Mrs. Carter Show, On the Run Tour and The Formation World Tour. It’s been quite a journey for Beyoncé in these last few years it would seem. I remember seeing interviews of her where she would say that she didn’t want to be perceived as a black performer, just as a performer; in so many words, she was pulling that “I don’t see race” on us. I always took issue with this because I am of the same camp as Uncle Malcolm (X), “I’m black first. My sympathies are black. My allegiance is black. My whole objectives are black.” Of course, everyone will interact with their identity how best helps them to sleep at night, so I tried not to judge her too harshly. I vividly remember Mrs. Carter Show, the excitement of witnessing her greatness, and I also remember thinking “she is working way too hard right now.” This was at the Barclays center which isn’t the biggest arena, so perhaps It was a  matter of proximity, but I felt as though her “green screen was showing”–I could see everything that went into making this show a success. At Formation, however, I felt as though everything seemed so much more effortless, which is definitely for me, a sign of artistic freedom. When you know your work speaks for itself and that you’ve put in the man hours over and over and over again, fire radiates off of you without need of gasoline.
Since The Mrs. Carter Show, she’s released her visual albums, Beyoncé and Lemonade. I don’t know what changed for her between the time she released 4 and these latest albums, but there has truly been an awakening of the black female imagination in her work. Where the Beyoncé album proclaimed that “I am a woman and I do not fit into a neat and pretty box,” Lemonade screamed “and don’t forget I’m a Black woman who will destroy the box entirely.” Beyoncé has the unfortunate circumstance of being so famous that everything she says is always absolutely wrong and absolutely right at the same time, but there was just reckless abandon with this album and this tour that tastes so intentional, and I am all the way here for it.  To put it mildly, The Formation World Tour was the Blackest Beyoncé concert I have ever been to. Blacker than her concert with her negro-with-the-Jackson-5-nostrils. The opening acts from the evening I went were French Montana, Tinashe, Yo Gotti, Ty Dolla Sign, Fabolous, Swizz Beatz (and his adorable son!), THE LOX, and chiiiiiile just errbody was there and the word nigga was flying off the stage with the swiftness of the wind blowing through that stadium.  HOW Bey?? How did we get here? Can we please stay? It was just the most boisterous middle finger flipping to respectability politics I have seen. And then for her to open with “Formation,” wearing all black and talking about her baby’s natural hair and being a country black girl right off the rip, and ending the concert with “Freedom” where she and her dancers are wading in the water in all white (okay, maybe their outfits were eggshell)…WHEW! I was so proud. We can speculate on whether or not her becoming vocal about her blackness occurring for financial gains, as people have done ad nauseum, but I thoroughly enjoyed that the most famous Black woman entertainer (conceivably in the world at present), was publicly drawing a line in the sand and you know what, I stand with her. (too soon??)

Sheyenne

Next Up: Taming of the Shrew at Shakespeare in the Park and War by Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins