|
A trebly radio ambles across stations, surveying Charles Anderson’s “Laughing Yodel”, Son House’s “Grinnin’ in Your Face”, Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “Down by the Riverside,” Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene,” and Roy Hamilton’s “Don’t Let Go,” finally pausing for the Lone Star drawl of Willie Nelson, spliff ablaze, reading out a call sign: “Welcome to the Smoke Hour on KNTRY Radio Texas.” The sixth song on Beyoncé’s eighth studio album, Cowboy Carter, is a curt history lesson nestled in a massive song cycle with an undeniable rallying cry. After she performed with the Chicks at the 2016 Country Music Association Awards, fusing Lemonade’s “Daddy Lessons” with the Dallas trio’s rendition of bluegrass vet Darrell Scott’s “Long Time Gone,” she experienced hateful backlash from racist traditionalists. “Smoke Hour” practically screams “We’ve always been here” to those detractors. It’s a sister to Solange singing “Almeda” — “Black skin, black braids / Black waves, black days / Black baes, black things / These are Black-owned things!” — to a white man in the front row at one of her shows. With Cowboy Carter, the second act of a trilogy that paid homage to Black queer innovators in electronic music on Renaissance, Beyoncé sends a message to Nashville: Country music must make room for all of the people creating and consuming it.
|
Get the Newsletter
