Lemonade Analysis II (Links)

So, Lemonade has been on continuous play on my hard drive.I have a serious Bey addiction, right now (along with Prince and a couple of rappers, tho’.)

 

Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’: A Visual Tale of Grief, Resurrection, and Black Female Empowerment

 

In my ongoing quest to annoy as many readers as possible with continuing coverage of what people are saying about Beyonce’s new album here are more links!

Actually I’m fascinated by various peoples interpretations of what the album means to them and what meanings they’ve derived from the music video. Some women felt empowered by it, some women were saddened and triggered by it, and some women had both reactions simultaneously. Keep in mind guys, this is as big a thing for us as the release of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video, only more girly.

 

This is a personal analysis from Floppynugget on Tumblr:

floppynugget

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My Rant on Lemonade: Intuition, Denial,  Anger, Apathy, Emptiness,  Accountability, Reformation,  Forgiveness, Resurrection, Hope, Redemption

So, I don’t really know how to express my thoughts on Beyonce’s visual album, Lemonade without breaking it down through each song. But what I can most definitely say is my favorite part of this film were the interludes in between each song. Each one is visually and aesthetically beautiful, her narration the same.

Catch Me if You Can – The intro and this song captivated me completely into this film (not including the fact that it’s a new visual album from Queen Bey). The cinematography is stunning and the visuals instantly give you the feel that Bey knows something’s up. I love the shots of all the beautiful, black woman staring into the camera and off into the distance, and her monologue complements these shots so well. I particularly loved the shot where she fell from the building into the water the most, to symbolize her drowning in her relationship, as she strips away all the black clothing she is wearing from earlier. I also love the spoken word during this interlude as well. When she steps out of this room, she is a completely different woman than the person she was in the intro song as she “parts the seas” as she exits.

Hold Up – Watching this music video simply makes me happy. This is the warning song for what is to come later on. Bey is angry, even though she has her huge smile throughout the song. Everyone is watching her and doesn’t stop her. One thing I noticed immediately was that the bat had “hot sauce” written on the bat, completely changing what she meant in Formation when she says she has hot sauce in her bag, which I also loved. She’s wearing a flowy feminine bright yellow dress, which is the opposite to how dark and angry she is feeling.

Don’t Hurt Yourself – one of my favorite songs off the album (the whole album is my favorite but still). Gender is completely reversed in this song and it’s so beautifully done. There’s a small speech in between about the “black woman” which flows so perfectly with the feel of the song. (I know I’m sitting her saying this is my favorite song but I don’t have much to say, but we’ll just keep going down the list)

Sorry – More gender reversal, which is everything. I love how Serena Williams is in this song to help add on to the gender reversal. Serena Williams is often joked about as being a “man” on the courts, and seeing her twerk and thrust her hip (which is more of a feminine dance) adds on to the whole gender reversal stuff she has going on. In this music video, Bey doesn’t care, nor has any interest into Jay anymore.

6 Inch Heels – I don’t really have much to say about this song. Don’t get me wrong it’s still amazing and the lyrics and visuals are very dark and eerie, but it isn’t one of my favorites. Bey feels empty after the anger has settled and she is processing her true feelings and goes into a dark period of time in her life.

Daddy Lessons – I love the old fashioned shots, clothing, and settings of this music video. I think this song was added to take away from the whole Bey and Jay-Z controversy, but none the less this song and the shots change the dark feelings of anger from the previous songs and visuals. I think this song was also added to show that her father is responsible as to how she is in her current relationship.

Love Drought – I have re-watched this one way too many times. I love the beautiful lades in formation walking by the water, all in perfect synchronization. It seems like her and the woman are trying to become one with the sea. This is her reformation to the hurt she experienced earlier. Turning the negative towards a positive, even. I also love the breakdown at the end of the song with the white make up that look like tears on her face.

Sandcastles – makes me cry whenever I listen to it (mainly because it reminds me of a past experience). Her vocals are raw and flawless, the visuals of Blue’s drawing just give you so many of the feels, and seeing Jay-Z in this film shows that he is aware of the pain he has caused.

Forward – at this point, I’m already bawling my eyes out from sandcastles and then Bey drops this song along with the haunting visuals. It’s only about a minute and 30 seconds, but it is another one of my favorites off the album.

Freedom – also makes me cry, and also another one of my favorites. Bey starts off singing it to the families seen in Forward. This music video symbolizes hope for what’s to come. She is hoping for freedom, referencing both the movement, Black Lives Matter, and freedom from her relationship as well.

All Night – this song is redemption from her past. it’s adorable, and cute, and we get to see the happy sides to her and Jay’s relationship. We see same sex couples, interracial couples, Bey pregnant, etc. and it’s just a good feel type of song/music video. I may be wrong but it looks as if Beyonce may be in the same field she was in in the first song in some shots, but she is in a much happier place, now that the darkness has been stripped away.

Overall, I am completely obsessed with this visual album, and we all know Becky with the good hair is Rachel Roy kbye

#homework eng130#beyonce#lemonade#jay z#becky with the good hair#queen bey#beyonce gifs#bey#formation

https://beta.theodysseyonline.com/decoding-lemonade

http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2016/04/26/475629479/close-to-home-a-conversation-about-beyonc-s-lemonade

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/how-beyonces-lemonade-exposes-inner-lives-of-black-women-20160428

 http://www.elleuk.com/now-trending/beyonce-releases-lemonade-album

What’s my favorite song so far? I’m going to have to go with “All Night”, with “Sorry” running just a couple of steps behind it. I like the lyrics and message in Sorry and All Night is just an extremely sexy song.

Unfortunately the only way to see the video now is on Tidal, but the good news is that Tidal is offering a free 30-day subscription. (If you decide not to join, remember to turn off the automatic renewal function, on your computers and phones.)

Lemonade Analysis

For those of you who are still geeking out about Beyonce’s new album, some of  the

 first in-depth, analysis  of Lemonade are being written. So, let’s   take a look:

From: owning-my-truth

Beyoncé’s “Love Drought” Video, Slavery and the Story of Igbo Landing

1. 

   [image description: Beyoncé in the music video for “Love Drought” marching into the water followed by a procession of black women]

   Beyoncé’s LEMONADE is filled with incredible artistry and stunning imagery. One of the most striking images for me on the visual album, though, occurs in the video for “Love Drought”. Much has been said about how LEMONADE draws influence from Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, but less has been said in these same conversations about how the story of Igbo Landing is central to Daughters of the Dust and how the story of Igbo Landing- an act of mass resistance against slavery-also shows up in a really pronounced manner in the “Love Drought” Video.

   

   [Image description: Donovan Nelson’s artistic depiction of Igbo Landing in charcoal. It shows the Igbo slaves marching into a body of water with the water already up to their necks and their eyes closed. Image via Valentine Museum of Art]

   For those who don’t know, Igbo Landing is the location of a mass suicide of Igbo slaves that occurred in 1803 on St. Simons Island, Georgia. As the story goes, a group of Igbo slaves revolted and took control of their slave ship, grounded it on an island, and rather than submit to slavery, proceeded to march into the water while singing in Igbo, drowning themselves in turn. They all chose death over slavery. It was an act of mass resistance against the horrors of slavery and became a legend, particularly amongst the Gullah people living near the site of Igbo Landing.

   Not only is the story of Igbo Landing one of the key themes of Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, which influenced LEMONADE, but its imagery also appears to be central to the “Love Drought” video. In the video, Beyoncé marches into the water followed by a group of black women all in white with black fabric in the shape of a cross across the front of their bodies. They march progressively deeper into the water before pausing and raising all of their hands toward the sunset.

   

   [Image description: Beyoncé marching into a large body of water by a beach followed by other black women]

   This scene and the video as a whole also occurs in a marshy, swampy landscape, matching African-American folklore descriptions of the location of Igbo Landing. In addition, this is all mixed in with imagery of Beyoncé physically bound in ropes and resisting their pull, which directly evokes slavery, resistance and the events at Igbo Landing for me.

   

   [Image description: Beyoncé on a beach leaning backward as she appears to be resisting the pull of a taught rope]

   Lastly, I would like to note how Beyoncé and the group of black women she is with very deliberately rose their hands while in the water toward the sunset. For me this recalled how the act of mass resistance at Igbo Landing was mythologized in many African-American communities as either the myth of the “water walking” or “flying” Africans. In the latter legend, the Igbo slaves walked into the water and then flew back to Africa, saving themselves in turn.

   Below is the myth of the “flying Africans” at Igbo Landing as told by Wallace Quarterman, an African-American man born in 1844 who was interviewed by members of the Federal Writers Project in 1930 (via wiki):

   Ain’t you heard about them? Well, at that time Mr. Blue he was the overseer and … Mr. Blue he go down one morning with a long whip for to whip them good… . Anyway, he whipped them good and they got together and stuck that hoe in the field and then … rose up in the sky and turned themselves into buzzards and flew right back to Africa… . Everybody knows about them.

   

   [Image description: Beyoncé and several black women partially submerged in water by a beach and raising their arms toward the setting sun]

   Seeing Beyoncé and a group of black women marching into the water and raising their hands collectively toward the sunset reminded me specifically of this last interpretation of the story of Igbo Landing where the slaves flew to their freedom.

   There are lots of potential interpretations for this video and the visual album as a whole but the core imagery of the “Love Drought” video – marshy landscape matching folklore descriptions of the location of “Igbo Landing,” images of Beyoncé bound in ropes and resisting their pull, a collective march into the water and holding their hands out toward the sky as if they were about to fly away together-basically screamed out to me as the story of Igbo Landing as I watched the video. It’s such a powerful act of mass resistance against slavery and as an Igbo person living today in America, it was moving to see imagery which reminded me strongly of it in LEMONADE as well.

What to read after watching Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’

[viaFusion]

“Lemonade” is not simply another “he done me wrong” album or video. The relationship at the heart of the lyrics is a Trojan horse, opening to the shores of black womanhood as healing and salvation.

It’s also obvious that Beyoncé and her collaborators have combed through some college syllabi and taken a few trips to the bookstore. “Lemonade” is basically a video version of Black Feminist Lit 101.

• The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart by Alice Walker
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime by J. California Cooper
• for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange
• Mama Day bu Gloria Naylor
• Beloved by Toni Morrison

Click through to view the full list.

 

vox.com

Beyoncé’s “Daddy Lessons” is a reminder of country music’s black and West African roots

Bey pushes against country music’s “little white myth.”

By Victoria M. Massie

poltlfreakshow

Not everyone is feeling Beyoncé’s foray into country music with the song “Daddy Lessons” on her new visual album Lemonade, including Country Music Television News contributor Alison Bonaguro.

In a short post on the CMT site, Bonaguro asks, “What’s so country about Beyoncé?”:

Sure, Beyoncé’s new album Lemonade has a song with some yee-haws, a little harmonica and mentions of classic vinyl, rifles and whiskey. But all of the sudden, everyone’s acting like she’s moved to Nashville and announced that she’s country now.

Some Twitter users saw a different problem: Bonaguro can’t hear the black roots of country music.

The subtext of @alisonbonaguro post is that Beyoncé is trying to appropriate country, a genre stolen from Black folks by white folks.

Lemonade stands out both for Beyoncé’s emotional and musical range: She tells the story of heartbreak and self-affirmation through a Kübler-Ross model of griefsung in classic R&B ballads, trap, soul, rock, and also, notably, country music.

This is a testament to Bey’s artistry. But it is also a reflection of the integral part black people have played in American music since its inception across all genres — including country music.

In the visual album, Beyoncé kicks off “Daddy Lessons” singing “Yee-haw” while wearing a voluminous Antebellum-style dress cut from African wax print — paying tribute to her home state Texas and her identity as a person of African descent, which also parallels the origins of country music itself.

Before Nashville was the home of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, country music was a genre borne of African slaves. Indeed, musicologists have traced country music’s iconic banjo back to the ngoni and xalam, plucked stringed instruments rooted in West Africa.

https://safe.txmblr.com/svc/embed/inline/https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2Flzt0v9roU6g#embed-5723d079d374c885873304

And yet country music’s “little white myth” persists today because of the erasure of the genre’s black roots and the contributions black artists have made to it over the years. One of the first black icons of country music was DeFord Bailey, an outstanding harmonica player whose hillbilly records in the 1920s drew from the black folk music tradition he grew up with.

In 1962, Ray Charles, one of the fathers of soul music, released Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, the first country record to sell 1 million copies, ushering in the possibility of the sort of pop and country music crossover for which white artists like Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift are now celebrated.

“[‘Daddy Lessons’] doesn’t sound like a country song to me,” Bonaguro wrote. That has little to do with Beyoncé and almost everything to do with the way country music’s black voices have been silenced or forgotten.

blipsterinsverige

🙌🏾

Source:poltlfreakshow

#music#Beyoncé#country

Some of these analysis’ are fascinating. I’d seen Daughters of the Dust, the movie that some of the video is based on, but I didn’t know about its Igbo origins. But there’s a lot of history so many of us just don’t know about. Even if you don’t think much of the album itself, you must admit the video imagery is opening up some interesting avenues of discussion among PoC.

It’s okay if you’re white and don’t get it, as Lemonade wasn’t written with white people in mind, but this could be a learning experience for you, as you share in finding out some fascinating details of Af-Am history.

And also:

http://www.spin.com/2016/04/beyonce-lemonade-hbo-album-film-analysis/

Response:

No, this isn’t going to be a regular weekly them or anything. I’ve always been a middling Beyonce fan. I’ve been following her career since her Destinys Child days, latching on to the odd single here and there, liking her more serious songs, (although most of her more famous songs are not  the deep ones.) I think this is one of her more mature albums, not just deeply personal to her, but resonant with so many other women. If you’ve ever been in a situation where you’ve been betrayed by someone you loved and trusted, the songs will definitely strike a chord with you. That’s not something you need to be Black to experience, but there are elements of the songs,and especially its video presentation, that speak most directly to African American women.

Another thing I find interesting is the virulently racist reaction to what is a essentially a bunch of songs about cheating. At their most basic level, the songs are just one woman’s deeply personal reaction to something that may, or may not, have actually happened to her, but the reaction to this is entirely out of proportion, when you understand that all she’s really done is make a few thousand black women feel loved and understood.

I guess some people consider self-love a dangerous thing.

Lemonade Linkfarm

<Please see the first post on Lemonade before visiting the links.>

I’m still reeling from the video. I’m a little verklempt! I have to catch up with myself here, so:

Here’s a handy linkspam to all things Lemonade, if you’re up for some reading. Some places, like the Huffington Post, totally got it. Their analysis was on point, some of them, like the previous one mentioned  at Bustle.com, were a little clueless, but most critics loved it, and of course, she slayed her fans.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/beyonce-lemonade-black-women_us_571ccccde4b0d912d5fee4d2

http://m.theybf.com/2016/04/23/quotes-from-beyoncés-lemonade-that-had-us-gasping-in-tears-or-saying-yassss

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/23/11496234/beyonce-lemonade

http://mic.com/articles/141642/here-s-the-malcolm-x-speech-about-black-women-beyonce-sampled-in-lemonade#.7wIGa4Oe0

http://www.complex.com/music/2016/04/beyonce-lemonade-film-essay

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/apr/24/beyonce-lemonade-album-video-black-girl-magic-womanhood-america

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/24/beyonce-calls-out-jay-z-s-cheating-in-lemonade-a-stunning-celebration-of-black-girl-magic.html

A List of songs from Lemonade:

Pray You Catch Me

Hold Up

Dont Hurt Yourself

Sorry

6 Inch

Daddy Lessons (This is the country song everyone’s talking about.  I loved this one. I don’t even listen to country music.

Love Drought

Sandcastles (This is the one that made everyone cry, including me.)

Forward (An anthem for the future.)

Look But Don’t Touch

 

 

Lemonade

For those of you wondering what all the hoopla was about last night, the Queen Bey (Beyonce) dropped her new album, and a long form video, with spoken word poems and music, on HBO, and Tidal. The album is inspirational, spiritual, and dedicated to Black women.

I don’t have the video which is more than an hour long. But it’s a gorgeous visual poem featuring songs from the album and the poetry of Somali poetess, Warsan Shire. The songs cover many styles of music, from Rock to Country. Beyonce talks about her personal relationships and love, early in the video, but later segues into inspiring words and spiritual stories and advice to black mothers, sisters, daughters.

The video has a cast of famous Black females, like Amandla Stenberg, Quvanzhane Wallace, and the mother of Trayvon Martin. People are still analyzing and parsing the video and I’ll have more about that analysis later this week.  The entire thing  was very emotional for me and a lot of other women. It was basically a long poem about how black women are NOT  the unloved, the unlovable and the unloving creatures of the prevailing racist narrative, and that is a beautiful thing for everyone to hear, if you ask me.

Tumblr (and Twitter) are the fastest responders, so here is some of what’s being said  on Tumblr.

This is a link to The artist and poems spoken in the video :

https://warsanshire.bandcamp.com

http://ghettablasta.tumblr.com/post/143310053508/beyoncés-lemonade-featured-amazing-cameos

 

http://wilsontoyourhouse.tumblr.com/

http://milkystreet.tumblr.com/post/143319631663/the-entirety-of-lemonade

Sorry if this link doesn’t work. The video is available on Vimeo. Keep in my mind it’s an hour long.

 

I knew who Becky was the moment  Beyonce  mentioned her name. 😆😆😆

No, I don’t think we should tell this writer who Becky is! Let them figure it out.

http://karnythia.tumblr.com/post/143320239042/the-answer-to-that-question-is-a-little-difficult

 

http://karnythia.tumblr.com/post/143303623252/queenconsuelabananahammock-arkynn-lemonade

And finally:

http://karnythia.tumblr.com/post/143299166867/micdotcom-holy-shit