Music and the Elevation of Consciousness

on Formation tour, 2016.

I have a mildly embarrassing custom of talking in-depth with a friend about various cultural, socio-political, and theological topics over the worst food that our society has to offer: greasy fast food. This past week was more defendable than most, considering our chosen location for conversation, WingStop, prides itself on cooking everything fresh. But the amount of salt, fat, and grease that I consumed that night (and that found its way quickly through my defenseless digestive tract) was more than enough to make me think twice about my life choices. During this conversation, as I munched on a deep-fried chicken wing coated in lemon-juice glaze and pepper, my friend paused, looked intently into my eyes, and offered me a question with great severity:

"Karl, I know you have thoughts on this. I just wanna know...why the hell should I care about Beyoncé and her twin babies?...because I just don't care!"

I slid the last strip of meat from the bone of that chicken wing and discarded it into the heap collected between our baskets like a burial midden. My jaw clicked as I prepared to offer my commentary, because yes, I told my friend, it is important. Yes, you very much should care. One sip of my carbonated, sugar-loaded beverage later, and I began with my thoughts.

Before 2016 Beyoncé, for me, was in a broad category of pop musicians with considerable influence on the world of entertainment, but whose artistry had not flowed over into the realm of political or social engagement. Of course, her credibility as a performer was already cemented by her role as leader of the early 2000s R&B group Destiny's Child, and her later courtship with Hip-Hop megastar Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter. Through my years in high school, and later in college, where my musical tastes diversified to accommodate influences from beyond the world of my cherished (and mostly white) indie rock, I grew to appreciate many of her peers, from producer Kanye West to Jay-Z himself. But apart from the times that I would listen to songs like "Irreplaceable" and "Crazy In Love" on the radio, I never respected her music as much as that of earlier icons in the world of soul music: with Alicia Keys bringing the sounds of the Hell's Kitchen apartments of her childhood, and the searing authenticity of Ms. Lauryn Hill's fervent rapping and lyrical singing especially making their mark.

Pop musicians have always had a tenuous relationship with the culture that they influence, and in turn that influences them. The 1960s proved that tumultuous social upheaval could also provide a meaningful creative environment for art to thrive. The Beatles weren't the first to describe the effects of drugs or loving people beyond borders when they dropped the White Album, but because of their influence as the biggest band in the world, people listened. The success of psychedelic influences in mainstream pop and rock music accounts for Woodstock's prominence in the Baby Boomer chronology, and the cultural assertions of 1970s soul and funk music (through James Brown's proud shouts of "I'm black and I'm proud!" for one) showed that music could provide a foundation for resistance against the systems of oppression. The Civil Rights movement of the previous decade was undergirded by choruses of Negro Spirituals imported from the black churches at the movement's vanguard. As hip-hop emerged from the party scene of a marginalized blocks of the Bronx in the late 1970s, it allowed for black Americans to express their overt rage against the ways they were brutalized in the streets by the ones who wore uniforms sanctioned by the state. When Ice Cube and Dr. Dre's group N.W.A. screamed "Fuck Tha Police!" into the microphone at their 1989 stop in Detroit's Joe Louis Arena, armed police officers rushed the stage and pursued the performers before detaining and interrogating the group. The powers did not heed these brothers from Compton, as well as their colleagues in New York (like Public Enemy), when the world watched as four officers in South LA were acquitted of the beating of Rodney King in 1991. Los Angeles erupted into the flames of a riot that burned in the eyes of more young people yearning to understand how they could reclaim their dignity in the face of such brutal subjugation.

The rest of that decade, which provided the background to my childhood, saw alternative culture transition into the mainstream. Yes, Hip Hop music was still considered "alternative," but the widespread influence of MTV and mixtapes allowed it to be spread and consumed by young people in all kind of environments: urban, suburban, and beyond. Largely thematically organized around the postmodern ideas of alienation and subjectivity, being an outcast was for once celebrated and championed. How many young people like me rooted for Doug Funnie to transcend the bullying he received from Roger Klotz and win the heart of sweet Patty Mayonaise? Didn't Arnold, the orphan living with his grandparents in a boarding house full of interesting and dysfunctional characters, realize the lifestyle of urban independence that so many tried to replicate when they joined the waves of gentrification that changed the coastal cities in the last few years? Even the beloved pop star Elton John, finally able to identify openly as a gay man, was able to captivate a nation and iconify its grief as he rewrote one of his best songs to serve as the eulogy for Princess Diana Spencer. Music was able to do more than communicate a culture's values. N.W.A. and Elton John showed that it was able to influence those values, and speak truth to them.

So where does this leave Beyoncé? What enabled me to look at her differently from other pop stars in her sphere? For too long, the female popstar has gone the way of Madonna: once championing her body as talking freely about her sexuality, now unable to titillate for obvious reasons. Her influence arguably reached its nadir with the collapse of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera around 2002 or so, and female pop stars struggled to reconstruct their place. Although Beyoncé continued to maintain an aura of idealized beauty, she largely remained restricted due to her objectification as a picture of black beauty (and, as many pointed out, who looked increasingly white). All of this changed, however, as her prominent marriage to Jay-Z allowed her to claim motherhood as a vocation, and in refusing to let the idol of celebrity drive her life, showed that a famous family could still be a happy family. But she was not out for the count. In 2016, something incredible happened. I would argue that Beyoncé, through the influence of her latest art, has transcended the limitations of musicianship and performance art to produce something that can influence our consciousness as human beings. In April 2016, she released the visual album Lemonade, a 12-track LP with such diverse collaborators as Jack White, the Weeknd, James Blake, and Kendrick Lamar, alongside an hourlong musical poem featuring her music. Apart from offering a staggeringly beautiful depiction of the black female body, she firmly and confidently asserts complete artistic control over every step of this work: whether presented alongside an array of immaculately choreographed dancers, imbedded in the haunting landscapes of the rural South, or taking her verbal metaphors to violent ends as she smashes windows and vintage cars with a baseball bat. Her featured guests are formidable artists themselves: White is one of the guitar's most talented and tortured souls, the Weeknd is firmly representative of mainstream R&B music, Blake is at the vanguard of a renaissance of electronic pop music, and Lamar is undeniably the most progressive and prophetic voice that Hip Hop has to offer. At no point do any of them overtake the chilling mastery that Beyoncé displays. Her vocals reach dizzying heights and tender whispers, shouting cries of "Freedom!" alongside Kendrick's furious verses and cracking at just the right moment when she sings at a solo piano on "Sandcastles." The album is a celebration of life in its fullness: the pain of heartache, the stomach-churning risks of love, and the rhythmic confidence of "slaying all day." Above all, this is a statement of life's importance and potential as presented by a black woman, using black symbology, and representing a prophetic, positive vision instead of a criticism of our current existence.

Thus to the question that my friend presented for me to consider. When I see Beyoncé cradling her stomach, draped in a veil that echoes the renaissance mastery depicting the idealized beauty of Aphrodite or the Blessed Virgin Mary, I see black womanhood as a positive thing. No longer are these bodies to be viewed as objects for consumption, or exploitation, or, as in the past, for brutal violence. Not only is this a positive idea, but it is a realization of hope, or beauty, of the ability to press onwards through times that feel overwhelmingly hopeless. I am grateful for Beyoncé in that it enables me to think towards a horizon that treats all of my brothers and sisters, but especially those who have been historically marginalized, with the same sort of celebratory reverence.

As a Christian, this is deeply congruent with my understanding of the Imago Dei inscribed on each person, but also on those vulnerable. Both Beyoncé and her unborn twins would be seen as threats to the future of our country at many points during its history. Now we can watch her throw off those shackles and stand in awe of humanity claiming the dignity offered by its Creator all along. Although the only mediating influence in our ability to reclaim this nature fully rests in the liberating action of Jesus as he dies and rises from the grave, we can see the fruit of the human potential here. I believe it is right to recognize and celebrate that. No, Bey, we can see your "halo." Call me a heretic. I don't care.