Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter’s genre-hopping and country-influenced new album, Cowboy Carter, has been one of many greatest popular culture occasions of 2024 to date. It has additionally been a serious occasion in aesthetics. What can we imply by that? Properly, in his groundbreaking 2016 guide, Black is Lovely: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics, the thinker Paul Taylor characterizes Black aesthetics within the following method:
to do “black aesthetics” is to make use of artwork, criticism, or evaluation to discover the position that expressive objects and practices play in creating and sustaining black life-worlds. The enchantment to exploration right here is extra expansive than it could seem. One can discover one thing by attempting to offer an account of it, within the method of a scientist. However one also can discover one thing by poking round, within the method of an explorer. On this sense artists discover the roles that expressive objects can play by attempting to make them play one position or one other, or by collaborating in and commenting on earlier makes an attempt to do that.
On this understanding, Cowboy Carter is itself a piece of Black aesthetics, one the place Beyoncé explores Black life-worlds by the lens of nation and style, in addition to a bunch of different themes. We invited 5 students working in aesthetics and philosophy of artwork to touch upon the album, and to have interaction with Beyoncé on these points. . Additionally, we needed to make it possible for the world knew that aesthetic thought of pop music reaches past the orbit of Taylor Swift.
On this roundtable, 5 aestheticians provide their reflections on the latest work by Queen Bey:
- Jeanette Bicknell (she/her), Impartial Scholar {and professional} mediator
- John Dyck (he/him), Lecturer in Philosophy at Auburn College
- Charles Peterson (he/him), Affiliate Professor and Chair of Africana Research at Oberlin School
- Corey Reed (he/him), Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Butler College
- Nicholas Whittaker (they/them), PhD candidate on the Metropolis College of New York, Graduate Heart
Jeanette Bicknell
Jeanette Bicknell is an Impartial Scholar {and professional} mediator based mostly in Toronto, Canada. She is the writer of Philosophy of Song and Singing: An Introduction (Routledge, 2015).
Musical preferences may be a side of 1’s sense of id, in a lot that very same method that belonging to an ethnic group or being from a sure place can. Songs about locations thus do double obligation; they have a good time a side of id in a method that makes attainable a shared social expertise. I feel that is one purpose why so many American widespread songs in all genres have a good time locations—cities, states, areas, and even rivers.
However something that can be utilized to convey folks collectively will also be used to divide them. The issues that outline us—our ethnicities, our being rooted in sure locations, even our aesthetic preferences—additionally serve to tell apart “us” from “them.” These of us who love this music are totally different from the parents who love that music. Songs about locations are about belonging, with the unstated implication that not everybody belongs.
This brings me to Beyoncé’s “Texas Maintain’em.” The track is already bringing folks pleasure, if we will take as proof the various dance routines it has impressed on TikTok, along with the feedback and responses.
However the track is extra advanced than that. The primary time I listened to “Texas Maintain’em”—and now each time I hear it—I’m struck by these strains:
There’s a twister in my metropolis
Hit the basement
That shit ain’t fairly
Unusual lyrics in a track about dancing, crimson cup kisses, and heading to the dive bar. They’re a reminder that locations and our emotions about them may be sophisticated. Tornados and different pure disasters don’t have an effect on everybody equally. Individuals who have poor or insufficient housing, or restricted entry to social infrastructure, are typically disproportionately impacted. Simply because all of us reside in the identical place doesn’t imply that all of us really feel like we belong.
The enjoyment in “Texas Maintain’em” is at odds with the undercurrent of anger I hear in so many nation songs. For each candy love track and each track about ingesting, there appears to be an offended track. A few of these additionally invoke locations, for instance “Attempt That in a Small City” and “Wealthy Males North of Richmond.” Like a deal with geographical location, anger can convey folks collectively and promote social cohesion in ways in which concurrently emphasize variations. In these songs, the singers presume that listeners who reside in small cities or south of Richmond share the identical values as these expressed within the track—and that they share the anger that’s expressed.
For me, “Texas Maintain’em” is linked with one among Beyoncé’s legendary performances: her live acapella rendition of the US national anthem on the press convention that introduced her upcoming Tremendous Bowl efficiency. She carried out the track reside to answer the controversy that arose when she sang the Nationwide Anthem together with a pre-recorded observe at Barack Obama’s inauguration. The reside efficiency was Beyoncé’s method of claiming, “I need to sing this track in your behalf.” I can not assist however consider President Obama’s personal efficiency of releasing his lengthy kind beginning certificates to point out that he was eligible to carry the place to which he was elected.
John Dyck
John Dyck is a Lecturer in Philosophy at Auburn College. One way or the other, he contracted a burning ardour for nation music whereas finishing graduate faculty in New York Metropolis.
Nation Carter shouldn’t be a rustic album. That is instantly obvious upon listening; the album comprises multitudes of genres, multitudes of samples. Beyoncé herself says that it’s not a country album, it’s a Beyoncé album. It’s simply as clear, although, that this album is about nation music. (The press kit tells us that the album “is about genres, all of them, whereas deeply rooted in Nation.”) It’s an album that desires to start out a dialogue about style, and particularly concerning the style of nation music. The observe “SPAGHETTII” opens with Linda Martell asking: “Genres are a humorous little idea, aren’t they?”
What does it imply for an album to be about style? Extra particularly: What does it imply for this album, which isn’t a rustic music album, to be about nation music? Let me recommend a solution: Beyoncé desires us to listen to each nation music and pop music otherwise—to listen to them accurately. Nation music is usually considered a white style, with primarily white influences. However nation doesn’t simply have an affect from gospel and blues; it comes from the identical supply as gospel and blues. These genres had been all born across the similar time, across the similar folks. To listen to nation accurately is to listen to it expansively and generously at its roots, to open one’s ears to the enormity of black affect even on early white ‘nation’ musicians like Jimmie Rodgers and Uncle Dave Macon (musicians who weren’t beneficiant in acknowledging their influences). Cowboy Carter helps us hear the capaciousness of nation. And in doing so it helps us hear nation accurately.
As soon as now we have a broader sense of nation music, we will begin to hear its affect throughout the huge starry sky of American music. If nation and blues share the identical supply, then the fingerprints of nation are throughout subsequent genres: southern rap, rock and roll, home music, pop music, and rhythm and blues. After we acknowledge this, we will hear nation in these genres. And the impact goes each methods. As soon as we see the deep roots of nation music in different genres, we hear these genres otherwise. This, I feel, is why there are such a lot of genres on this album: Beyoncé helps us hear the affect of nation music throughout the musical panorama.
The shimmering observe “II HANDS II HEAVEN” is my favourite of the album. At first it appears like it’s firmly in R&B territory. But when we hear for nation music, we will hear it. We hear it within the cadences and harmonies. The repetitions are paying homage to old-time banjo music. And because of this, the R&B-ness of the entire observe involves tackle a little bit of a rustic tinge. The tonal weight of the entire track shifts ever so barely; we hear the bumps and never simply the smoothness. On this album, Beyoncé helps us to listen to the genres otherwise.
If the purpose of the album is to get us to listen to music otherwise, then it’s not only a work of music, it’s also a piece of music criticism—actual music criticism, in thinker Arnold Isenberg’s sense. The purpose is to alter our notion and engagement with artwork, not simply to offer us data. Given the recognition of podcasts like Dissect, it’s straightforward to attempt to perceive this album by taking part in the sport of “Dissectification”: by ‘getting’ all of the samples and references. There are wealthy and modern samples, but when I’m proper, accumulating all of them shouldn’t be the purpose. Listening otherwise is the purpose.
Charles Peterson
Charles Peterson is Affiliate Professor of Africana Research, Chair of Africana Research, and Director of the Gertrude B. Lemle Instructing Heart at Oberlin School. His analysis pursuits embrace Africana philosophy, movie, and Africana political and cultural concept. Peterson is a coeditor of De-Colonizing the Academy (Africa World Press, 2003), writer of DuBois, Fanon, Cabral and the Limits of Anti-Colonial Management (Lexington Books, 2007) and Past Civil Disobedience: Social Nullification and Black Citizenship (Palgrave-McMillan, 2021).
Percival Everett’s quick story “The Appropriation of Cultures” describes the journey of Daniel Barkley, an African-American man of leisure, who in an epiphanic act of subversion reverses the engines of cultural which means. Daniel, whereas taking part in guitar one night time in a university bar in South Carolina, is mockingly requested by two drunken white college students to play the post-Reconstruction anthem “Dixie.” At first startled, Daniel accepts the problem, and in earnestly performing the ditty of antebellum nostalgia, finds heartfelt which means and connection to the longed-for imaginative and prescient of the Antebellum South, startling the white viewers in flip. The remainder of the story describes how Daniel expands his subversion by buying a pick-up truck, displaying the battle flag of the Military of Northern Virginia and proudly flying the flag from his house.
Everett describes how the white residents on the town are disrupted by his identification with their neo-Accomplice image and one night time, performing “Dixie” earlier than an African-American viewers, Daniel’s immersion within the lyrics infect the viewers who by the top of the jazzier, funkier association of the track, discover themselves singing, dancing, and feeling the track with him. By the top of the story, the track and flag have turn out to be ubiquitous among the many South’s Black inhabitants whereas fading from sight as a illustration of white cultural politics.
Change Daniel Barkley with Beyoncé Knowles and “Dixie” with Cowboy Carter and you’ve got the makings of an intense nationwide dialogue on the iconography of Beyoncé and its implications for African-American id. Once more. Beyoncé’s current launch, Cowboy Carter, a rustic and Western-based mostly LP, is a refined and nuanced mixing of American roots genres, stamped by an iconic cowl picture [Ed. note: see top of post] that has sparked nationwide dialogue concerning the African-American relationship to nation music and Americana.
The picture has sparked 4 primary questions: (1) Is Beyoncé expressing an id based mostly on her Black Texan upbringing? (2) Is that this picture and album a reactionary and unquestioning embrace of the symbols of American empire? (3) What does it imply to problem the white nationalist presumptions of nation and western music? and (4) Has Beyoncé astutely joined on to a rising motion in nation music, following within the tracks of Rhiannon Giddens, Allison Russell, Kaia Kater, et al.? Every of those questions follows its particular paths, and what stays is the disarming nature of the picture which roundly challenges the assumptions of the viewer no matter race, gender, geography, because it troubles the assumptions of nation as white, Black as City, the heroic as male, and Beyoncé as fastened commodity. For these searching for to affix Beyoncé with the politics of her earlier efforts and pictures (“Formation,” Lemonade, Homecoming, and Renaissance), what she most precisely shows is the chameleon-like adaptability and market fungibility of the best of artists (consider David Bowie, Miles Davies, hesitantly Madonna, Picasso) and the flexibility to characterize tradition with out politics and politics with out ideology.
Corey Reed
Dr. Corey Reed is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Butler College. He specializes within the essential philosophy of race and racism and Africana philosophy. His work focuses on Black existentialism, phenomenology, and aesthetics.
Beyoncé’s new album Cowboy Carter is a decolonial mission. What many perceived as Beyoncé “attempting out” nation music comes throughout extra as a critique of the idea of musical style itself and its political motivations. Understanding this album requires us to return to the general public rejection of Beyoncé’s 2016 efficiency of “Daddy Classes” with the Chicks. The critique of Beyoncé as not qualifying as a top-ranking nation artist, regardless of using devices, sounds, and linguistic instruments widespread to nation music, together with famous nation artists like Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, and others, and incorporating a few of the narrative tropes of nation music, can solely come from one among two issues. Both nation music exemplifies a politics of purity, which means {that a} nation artist should completely produce nation music and characterize some “genuine” connection to the idea of “nation,” or there’s a racialized rejection of Beyoncé as a result of nation music is now gatekept by a White centricity. The previous simply falls aside, as Miley Cyrus (included on this album with different artists that exist “between genres”) is allowed to maneuver between pop and nation music. The latter is a part of Beyoncé’s critique, as she highlights modern, Black nation artists and reminds the viewers of nation music’s Black roots.
Beyoncé makes a really clear assertion by Linda Martell, one of many first profitable Black ladies in nation, within the tracks “The Linda Martell Present” and “Spaghettii.” Within the former, Martell says, “This explicit tune stretches throughout a spread of genres / and that’s what makes it a novel listening expertise.” The observe features as an introduction to the track “Ya-Ya,” which blends a Tina-Turner rock and roll sound whereas evoking the Seashore Boys. She begins the track “Spaghettii” by saying that “Genres are a humorous little idea, aren’t they?… In concept, they’ve a easy definition that’s straightforward to know / However in follow, effectively, some might really feel confined.” Beyoncé shouldn’t be gesturing solely at her creative confinement; she is alluding to how these boundaries confine folks’s understanding of music. The mixing and transcending of style is demonstrated throughout the album: “Daughter” provides moments of classical music, “Spaghettii,” “Tyrant,” and “Candy Honey Buckiin’” display clear hip-hop components, “Amen” alludes to gospel music, and so on. There are moments Beyoncé even performs together with her personal discography, as “Riiverdance” sounds paying homage to her final mission Renaissance, and “II Palms II Heaven” feels prefer it might be on 4 or I Am… Sasha Fierce.
Beyoncé masterfully shows that there are central parts to her sound that exist throughout her works, however she shouldn’t be restricted to a style. I name her mission decolonial as a result of I see it dismantling how we perceive classes and different limitations positioned on artists and artwork. It’s also decolonial as a result of it’s immediately addressing antiblack oppression in a musical fashion that has Black roots and is a creolized (combined to the purpose of a brand new creation and the alternative of a purity politic) artform.
Nicholas Whittaker
Nicholas Whittaker is a doctoral candidate in philosophy on the Metropolis College of New York, Graduate Heart. In Fall 2024, they are going to be becoming a member of the Wesleyan philosophy division as assistant professor. Their writings on artwork, love, and blackness may be present in numerous educational and public venues, together with the Journal of Aesthetics and Artwork Criticism, The Level, and The New York Instances. They’re positioned in Queens, New York.
Cowboy Carter fucks me up earlier than the twang even begins. Beyoncé’s voice, swirling about with overdubbed grace, unfurls a lush, open area, swollen with chance. Then she dusts off her boots and hits a whining pleading howl that your common punker has spent her entire profession taking pictures for. I needed to pause, to play that second time and again. However Beyoncé had different plans. There’s no time for hesitancy.
At this level in her life, Beyoncé has nothing to show; not as a cultural icon, not as an artist, and definitely not as a vocalist. And but Cowboy Carter is maybe the most important vocal flex she has ever supplied us. Americana rasp, R&B dexterity, psychedelic swirls, operatic grandeur; by no means one factor for multiple second, her voice is overwhelming in its fecundity.
Greater than any Beyoncé album I can recall, Cowboy Carter makes use of that voice as its structure. Thick swamps of dubs construction virtually each track, generally swallowing the guitar plucks and 808s. She, fairly merely, dominates. There’s not an inch of humility in Cowboy Carter. I don’t imply to moralize this. However it does appear to pose a small downside. In any case, what’s nation music, if not humble?
As John Dyck has written right here on Aesthetics for Birds, nation music is distinctly humble. It lacks pretensions of excessive fashion; its stars insist on remaining—or showing to stay—firmly anchored in good, clear soil. So there’s one thing instantly odd a couple of star of Beyoncé’s creative and cultural standing asking us to affix her in a hoedown. This isn’t some extent about “authenticity”, about whether or not or not Beyoncé, as a person, or Cowboy Carter, as an album, are genuinely nation. However it’s a query about what nation turns into when filtered by the prism of Queen Bee.
Take her “Jolene” cowl. Dolly Parton’s authentic is the epitome of humble nation: she, fairly merely, negs herself, time and again, measuring her personal worth towards that of one other girl, yet another fierce and exquisite and highly effective. Beyoncé correctly acknowledges that these phrases would sound ludicrously insincere from her lips. And so her “Jolene” is a scathing sneer: she’s not begging, however warning, any girl silly sufficient to attempt to steal her man.
However in between the flexes, Beyoncé sings this:
I sleep good, glad,
Trigger you possibly can’t dig up our planted seeds,
I do know my man’s gon’ stand by me
Inhaling my mild breeze.
Humility, conceitedness: these are phrases we use to explain human beings. Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter is a human being: however the Beyoncé of Cowboy Carter is one thing totally different. She’s a breeze, an environment, a world. She’s not a rustic musician; she’s a rustic unto herself.
Nation musicians are humble; however what they’re attempting to articulate shouldn’t be. Grasslands, mountains, hidden rivers; a land with bones older than genres of any form; a reference to soil deeper than any deed; indescribable bonds of affection and vengeance, kinship and betrayal. Beyoncé doesn’t trouble attempting to explain such issues. She embodies them. The ensuing expansiveness, dynamism, sublimely catastrophic dominance, is the sound of nation.
In “Oh Bury Me Not,” Johnny Money sings of a youth, a dying cowboy, who begs to not be buried within the lone prairie, to not be overwhelmed by its grandiosity. I encourage you, don’t convey that anxious resistance to Cowboy Carter. Let it—let her—overwhelm you.
Edited by Aaron Meskin (College of Georgia) and Alex King (Simon Fraser College)
