America the beautiful, her amber waves of pain, freed from the plantation, and buried in liberty’s name.
Beyoncé’s “AMERIICAN REQUIEM,” the opening track off her 2024 studio album Cowboy Carter, encapsulates racism and 100 years of music from the American South in a five-minute and 25-second funeral service.
The elegy begins with the melancholic sigh of an organ accompanied by harmonies of Beyoncé singing, “Nothin’ really ends / For things to stay the same they have to change again / Hello, my old friend / You change your name, but not the ways you play pretend.”
The “old friend” for whom Beyoncé recorded Cowboy Carter is the dynamic racism employed by the music industry in its establishment of racial ties to the country music genre. Racism is ingrained into the music industry. The methods in which racism is employed can change, such as the re-establishment of country music as a white genre, but the ways that it hurts kill the same.
Continuing the requiem, Beyoncé sings to the souls of the dead, “The big ideas (Yeah), are buried here (Yeah).” These big ideas—liberty, freedom, and equality—are inaccessible to Black Americans, Beyoncé argues, buried beneath the bedrock of racial trauma and abuse. The opening hymn ends with a politely exasperated “Amen,” and a sitar begging to be heard starts the funeral sermon.
Cowboy Carter was born from a visceral reaction of a white audience watching Beyoncé performing her song “Daddy Lessons” alongside The Chicks during the 2016 Country Music awards.
Beyoncé wrote on Instagram, “It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed… and it was very clear that I wasn’t. But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of country music and studied our rich musical archive.”
Beyoncé was subjected to racist backlash online, and the Country Music Association’s website was swarmed by bigots claiming that Beyoncé is not “country”— at least not their country. In response to this hate, Beyoncé opens her sermon by singing, “It’s a lot of talkin’ goin’ on / While I sing my song / Can you hear me? / I said, ‘Do you hear me?’” In reference to her 2016 performance, her name—along with other, worse names—was on the tongue of the audience despite having never uttered it herself.
Interpolating “For What It’s Worth (Stop Hey What’s That Sound),” Beyoncé sings “Looka dere, looka dere,” a part of Louisiana vernacular spoken by Beyoncé’s maternal family. In the interpolation of a protest song, Beyoncé asks the members of the service to stop, listen, and take a look at their surroundings: the open casket before them, exposing racism’s shallow grave, black silt smearing the insides of a satin coffin.
Following suit, Beyoncé eases the calamity and clarifies her question, asking the audience, “Can you hear me? / Or do you fear me?” She wonders if people can hear her and they are just choosing not to listen, afraid to give power to a Black woman reclaiming the historically Black genre of country.
For decades, country music has been associated with white America, despite its roots in Black culture, originating from the banjos and hillbilly music of rural Black America. “Can we stand for something?” Beyoncé challenges America, saying,“Now is the time to face the wind.” She calls on Americans to stand together and face the hard truth: there is a problem in country music’s repression of Black artists. Cowboy Carter is her way of “takin’ up space” and establishing her legitimacy to perform her country’s music.
Beyoncé, reveling in the controversy she created, teases her audience. “Can you stand me?” she asks. Next, she questions her audience’s character, “Can you stand with me?”—inviting them to face the wind with her as a force united against racism. The preachings of “Can you stand me?”s and “Looka dere”s reach a joyous climax. Beyoncé delivers a final call to arms, demanding, “Together, can we stand?”—ending the first refrain of the sermon with a stance against racism.
In the second refrain, her requiem spirals into a personal anecdote of ancestry and controversy. She proudly states “looka there, looka in my hand… Gadsden, Alabama /Got folk down in Galveston, rooted in Louisiana”.
She finally reveals to the funeral service what she has been pointing out this entire time, her family’s history and her claims to country music. Like tracing one’s ancestry through the folds in one’s palm, Beyoncé, like many Black Americans, can trace her ancestry through slavery, the mutilated body lying in racism’s aforementioned shallow grave. Beyoncé name-drops Galveston, the last town in America to be emancipated by Union soldiers on June 19, 1865, and the birthplace of Juneteenth. The “longest-running African-American Holiday” officially became a federal holiday in June of 2021.
Beyoncé’s mother grew up in Galveston, but her family tree has its roots in Louisiana. Furthermore, echoing the sentiment of Southern pride established on Formation, “My daddy Alabama /Momma Louisiana,” Beyoncé asserts her rightful inheritance to the genre of country music. Continuing her sermon, she preaches, “If that ain’t country, tell me what is?” Beyoncé, who was raised in the deep South, was brought up speaking a Southern accent, which she received flack for. Later, in attempts to please the white music industry, she dropped her accent, attended the CMA’s and performed a country song, and received unjustified racist backlash. Beyoncé’s heritage, like the “big ideas” she preaches, is buried in the South. Thus, she closes her heartfelt sermon, stating that her Southern heritage makes her an heir to the country music throne.
Beyoncé begins the requiem’s closing hymn in vocal harmonies reunited with the melancholic organ. Calling upon the angels and Abraham, Beyoncé recalls, “(When I sang the song of Abraham) /(When the angels guide and take my hand)” The “song of Abraham” she sings of, is her emulation of his life story. Beyoncé is a modern-day musical prophet, ushering in a musical renaissance and reclamation of traditionally Black music. In this renaissance, she sings, “goodbye to what has been /A pretty house that we never settled in.” To Beyoncé, country music is a pretty house, not a home. A home is something that is settled in. Despite being built by Black people, the house is white and continues to evict its Black tenants. As the hymn carries on, the requiem is revealed to be “A funeral for fair-weathered friends.”
Leading her Black musical renaissance, Beyoncé says goodbye to an institution that never embraced her and only used her to its advantage. Buried within this song is a deep musical history of racial gatekeeping combated by the sonic and spiritual renaissance of Black music.
