(New York) Beyoncé, world queen of R’n’B and pop, releases her first album labeled country music, nourished by her native Texas and highlighting the African-American influence in this popular genre. very conservative.
The African-American singer, also actress and businesswoman comes out Friday midnight Cowboy Carteract II of his trilogy Renaissance.
Born in Houston to a mother from Louisiana and a father from Alabama, Beyoncé, 42, became at the end of February, even before the album was released, the first black singer to rank a song at the top of the charts country music, a very popular musical genre in the United States and traditionally associated with white men.
IMAGE PARKWOOD/COLUMBIA/SONY, PROVIDED BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
The album cover Act ll: Cowboy Carter
With the success of the tube Texas Hold’Empunctuated by the sound of the banjo, and the simple 16 Carriagesreleased during the Super Bowl on February 11, black country artists hope to benefit from a spotlight.
From her first female gospel and R’n’B group, Destiny’s Child, to her 2016 hit Daddy LessonsBeyoncé, wife of New York rapper and businessman Jay-Z (Shawn Corey Carter), highlighted her native South and the influence of country on her music and style.
Conservative white musicians
This musical genre has always permeated the work of “Queen Bey”, whose global triumph shakes up the traditions of country music rather associated with white and conservative musicians.
According to music historians, the banjo, the original instrument of country, bluegrass and folk music, finds its roots in the Caribbean in the 17th century.e century, played then by black slaves deported from Africa to the Americas. Brought to the eastern United States, the banjo was taken up by white populations of Appalachia in the following centuries.
“Black country” has always existed, but black musicians have been kept out of the genre.
Singer, author, dancer, producer, actress, Beyoncé is today the most successful artist in the history of the Grammy Awards, awards of the American music industry.
But paradoxically, out of her 32 awards, she has never won best album. A controversy over the lack of diversity that her husband Jay-Z refueled by criticizing the music industry during the last Grammy Awards on February 5.
Beyoncé was also the victim of racism in 2016 after playing her country song Daddy Lessonsduring the awards of the association of this musical genre.
“The criticism that came my way when I first got into (country music) forced me to push myself beyond my own limits,” she wrote recently on Instagram. This new album “is the result of the challenges I set myself and the time I took to twist and mix genres for this work”.
In 2019, one of the songs of the year, Old Town Road by rapper Lil Nas Which caused controversy.
“Purely white country”
“As soon as a black artist releases a country song, value judgments, comments and criticisms fly in droves,” blasted in the British newspaper The Guardian folk and blues singer Rhiannon Giddens, featured on the track Texas Hold’Em.
She denounced “people who are trying to preserve nostalgia for a purely white (country) tradition that never existed.”
In recent years, black artists have still managed to break into country music, such as Mickey Guyton and Brittney Spencer.
A sign of this late recognition, Tracy Chapman’s famous folk and country song released in 1988, Fast Carwon Best Song 2023 at the Country Music Awards, but that was after white singer Luke Combs covered it.
For Charles Hughes, author of the book Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American SouthBeyoncé’s country period is “the claim of part of her musical identity and her roots in Houston”, the cosmopolitan metropolis of Texas.
For now, “the white-dominated music industry and country music are asking black and mixed-race artists to demonstrate sincerity and good faith,” continues the analyst.
Over the past 15 years, Beyoncé “has really turned to her Texas roots,” Hughes insists, which “has led to hostility from people saying ‘Oh, she can’t do country’.”