Today's episode is about Beyoncé's new album, Cowboy Carter. Beyoncé’s country-inspired album has caused a stir because the country music scene has long been white dominated, with a history of segregation that has erased its Black roots and gatekept it from Black artists.
The release of Beyoncé’s new album, Cowboy Carter, was a much awaited event for a lot of us. There was much anticipation about this being a country album — and a lot of talk about the resistance some radio stations had and still have to that idea. That’s because country music is considered "white music," even though its Black historical roots are well documented. But Cowboy Carter is about so much more than country music. It honours other Black musical legends — and challenges the segregation we still see and hear in the music industry today. Vinita is joined by two experts to talk about it all. Alexis McGee is an Assistant Professor of Writing Studies at the University of British Columbia and author of "From Blues to Beyoncé: A Century of Black Women’s Generational Sonic Rhetorics." And Jada Watson is Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities at the School of Information Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her current research, called SongData, uses music industry data to examine representation in the country music industry.
THIS IS AN UNEDITED, UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT
PROMO SWAP
Vinita Srivastava: Change affects everyone, but it doesn't affect everyone equally. Immigrants often bear a unique burden due to climate change, but they're also leading the way with impactful solutions. And there's a new podcast series shining a light on all of it. From flooded basement apartments in New York city to indigenous Mayan farming practices in Nebraska, Home, Interrupted brings you deeply reported original stories from across the United States. The podcast is produced by Feet in 2 Worlds, a news outlet that pairs early career immigrant and racialized journalists with veteran media makers. The first episode of Feet in 2 Worlds, Home, Interrupted, is already out. Find it wherever you listen to your podcasts.
PULL QUOTE
Jada Watson: Beyoncé absolutely should be played on country radio. These are country songs. They should not be ignored by the format at all, but they're only playing Beyoncé. They're not also playing Tiera Kennedy, Tanner Adell, Reyna Roberts, Brittney Spencer, Mickey Guyton, Rissi Palmer. They're not playing their music. So, it's really hard to be celebratory within the country industry space because it's not creating pathways in the way that the country industry works.
INTRO
Vinita Srivastava: For so many people, the release of Beyoncé's latest album, Cowboy Carter, was a much awaited event. For me, I listened to it within hours of its release on Friday.
There was so much anticipation about this being a country album, and a lot of talk about the resistance some radio stations had, and still have to that idea. That's because country music is often seen as being white music, even though the Black historical roots of country music are well documented. But Beyoncé's new album is actually genre defying. It moves easily from country to nineties pop to seventies rock.
It also honours musical legends and challenges the racial segregation we still see and hear in the music industry today.
We're going to talk about all of this on today's episode with two people who were also eagerly awaiting the drop of this album. Alexis McGee is an assistant professor of Writing Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her book, From Blues to Beyoncé: A Century of Black Women’s Generational Sonic Rhetorics offers an intimate and global perspective on the history of sound as applied through the lives of Black women.
Also with us is Jada Watson, assistant professor of Digital Humanities at the School of Information Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her current research, called SongData, uses music industry data like radio airplay, charts, awards, and streaming numbers to examine representation in the country music industry.
Thank you both so much for being here.
INTERVIEW
Vinita Srivastava: So let's just jump right in. Alexis, let's start at the very beginning, which is, how did you feel when you listened to this album?
Alexis McGee: I really felt a sense of comfort, recognition perhaps. I have always felt connected since both of us are from Texas. I was raised in Texas. So sometimes I claim that sometimes I don't, but I feel a sense of connection with Beyoncé because of we have those shared roots and really listening to Cowboy Carter, I felt like my... growing up, my personal experience growing up on blues and jazz, but also bluegrass and gospel and country gospel, having those as foundations for how I understood myself growing up was really reflected in this album. So I felt comfort and at ease and ecstatic and elated, but a peaceful sort of joy with an album that touches me so deeply.
Vinita Srivastava: Jada, how about you? What did you think of this album?
Jada Watson: I really, um, wasn't sure what to expect, because those first two tracks sort of like set you up for, for me, a really country experience. And then you get the album, and it's, I'm not saying this in a way to refute it being country, it's just not only country.
But of course, it's Beyoncé and she's always pushing boundaries musically, lyrically, narratively. And so I actually now think, why am I so surprised? Because it fits within this broad umbrella of what I would call Americana, broadly speaking. An Americana of musical styles that all have their roots in Black musical traditions, whether it's country, whether it's blues, whether it's soul, whether it's R&B.
There's just such a genre defying, boundary defying ness about this album. And it is at the core of who Beyoncé always has been. But in this album, more so than others. In a way, I want to draw a line from Lemonade to this. There's a really interesting arc between Lemonade. That it fits into that bound of breaking down silos that have boxed in figures within musical genre.
It's actually breaking with all the expectations that I had, but then also breaking with the expectations of the industry.
Vinita Srivastava: You use the term Americana and it makes me think of her album cover of this all American red, white, and blue kind of thing that she's putting forth. And then you also talked about going back to Lemonade and drawing the line when I- I say saw because it was like a seeing kind of thing, Lemonade, but this real critique of America, and then at the same time, a reclaiming of being American. And this one, I also felt like she took us on such a journey of the history and the, you know, currency of American music. Alexis, do you have a favourite track?
Alexis McGee: I'm still kind of holding on to TEXAS HOLD 'EM. 16 CARRIAGES is also like something that I want to just put on repeat.
I also like PROTECTOR. I like TYRANT at the very end as well. I appreciate Dolly Parton's bits in here more so than Willie Nelson, but that could be my bias being from Texas. I'm inundated with Willie Nelson. I want to put Dolly on a pedestal a little bit more. So JOLENE, I really do appreciate being a super big fan of the original.
Back to Jada's point about the, the arc from Lemonade to here with the background of 'Becky with the good hair'. So I really like the storytelling of taking the original and spinning it in a different way, but it should evolve. It should have a continuation. We're not done having this conversation in society and public at large in music about these different types of relationships that are at the core of the songwriting.
So I guess the answer is no. I don't have a favourite. I just like everything!
Vinita Srivastava: You're like, the whole album is my favourite, but you're talking about JOLENE for some reason, that was the one track I had to share it. I just felt this need to like share it through the chat groups and whatever. So you guys got to listen to this. And how about you, Jada? Did you have a favourite track?
Jada Watson: Yeah, I have two that sort of stand out for me, but actually not for musical reasons. But, because of what they mean for the country music industry, so I was very pleasantly surprised to hear the voices of Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts, Tiera Kennedy, and Tanner Adell as backing vocals on BLACKBIRD.
It is a sonic thing, they do sound beautiful together, but it was the symbolic nature behind highlighting four emerging Black female singer songwriters in the country industry. And then by that same token, I very much love hearing Linda Martell's. Voice in the Linda Martell show, but specifically at the outset of SPAGHETTI. Linda is the first Black female artist to ever chart in the country music industry. And until Beyoncé's song hit number one on the hot country songs chart six weeks ago, she was the highest charting Black female artist in the industry, reaching 22 in 1969. She's still alive. She's 82. She could have been a massive star. She emerged at the same time as Charley Pride, but she was treated very poorly.
In fact, Alexis reading your book made me think about her and the ways in which she was let go from her label, but then blackballed from the industry. So, her label didn't want her, but nobody else could have her either. Hearing her voice, hearing her chuckle, hearing the way she speaks about genres as these funny little things.
It really struck me just to hear her voice in a way that we're robbed of because of the way in which she was treated in the industry. So those are the ones that stand out for me. They're big cultural importance for the country music industry.
Vinita Srivastava: I love that you're talking about the cultural importance of this album.
There is a lot of significance to this album. I mean, you mentioned that Beyoncé was the first Black woman to hit the top of that Billboard Top Country chart. And many people were excited, but some were like, no, we've always been here. And others were threatened. Can we stop for a moment and just explore a little bit the cultural significance of this?
Is she making history right now? Is Beyoncé making history right now? And Alexis, you talked about being from Texas and country is everywhere there.
Alexis McGee: Yeah, I haven't been back to Texas in maybe two years since coming to Canada. So I really can't wait to get back to Texas and feel this album at the ground level. And I was raised in San Antonio, which is also known as Military City, USA. So there's a lot of connection between like what country is and governmental political structures that drive the politics of the city and in San Antonio it's also a very segregated city still and there's also a lot of pride in the the culture of country there. Particularly with the rodeo, we have this little bit of a rivalry of course between Dallas and Houston and San Antonio and who, who wins the biggest indoor rodeo.
And I grew up often going to the rodeo 'cause it was in between my birthday and my mom's birthday and my mom's birthday's in February. Black culture's coming to a front with Black History Month. So we are usually trying to blend a lot of things in our, in my family because we were also trying to make sure that we were attached to our roots that we had a sort of understanding that being both Black and white. There's a mix of things going on and then also understanding the city that we live in. It's a culmination of all these things.
So going to the rodeo was sort of symbolized. Here's where this sort of miscegenation will come into play, where we can see- see it on a daily basis where we can understand it. But also in going to the rodeo, you had to prepare yourself for some of the traumas that you might see. I often get really dirty looks. They often was like the only Black person that would see around there until recently. And you can see it in the musical lineups for the rodeo, how the musical lineups would change, who headlines the rodeos.
And that sort of iteration of Cowboy Carter is sort of solidified in the album and you can see the musical genres being blended, which is something we always have at the rodeo, you can see past and present coming together in one to make this sort of new identity. And then you also see the participants, the listeners, the actors engaging with what is this quote unquote new phenomenon of this blending of genre, blending of time, blending of voices. And you see the visceral reactions to it. It's either positive or negative. There's tension. There's this idea of like, I, I enjoy this. I want to appropriate it, but I also don't want you to have it. And I don't want you to be a part of it. And all of that is like symbolic in the rodeo. And this album that was sort of like a sonic representation of the city that I grew up in. I think that's why I felt such at peace and joy and such recognition in it because it takes me back to those days of going to the rodeo, of signifying this is who I am, these are my roots.
It's not perfect. I can be proud of it. I can be ashamed of it all at once. And that's just sort of like identity, right? There's never a perfect identity. So for me, it was really significant because it represented so much of what I grew up with and still do. Even in Canada, I still get some of those same looks that I did get at the rodeo.
Vinita Srivastava: Your story, I can't help but think about the Country Music Awards in 2016. You talked about getting dirty looks at the rodeo. Jada, do you feel like telling the story about Daddy Lessons and what happened at the Country Music Awards?
Jada Watson: Sure. In November 2016, it was the 50th anniversary of the Country Music Association Awards. It was a big night for Nashville. And the CMA invited Beyoncé to come and perform and she had The Chicks come along with her and they performed Daddy Lessons with The Chicks song brought in in the bridge, specifically a song that questions what country and what the industry is, which was really provocative. I think they had the largest performance slot of the night. There was a report that it was 15 minutes.
Vinita Srivastava: Yeah, it says that it was five and a half minutes, but they measure audience reception every 15 minutes. So they said that it was the most popular 15 minutes ever.
Jada Watson: Yes, that's right. Remarkable for a few counts because this is a country song off of, uh, Lemonade. And one that she had submitted to the Grammys for contention for the country category, and it was rejected as being not country. But also she was performing with The Chicks, who were boycotted from country format radio after Natalie Maines in March 2003 said from a concert stage in England, "We're ashamed of this war, we're ashamed of this fighting, uh, being, uh, the invasion of Iraq, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas."
So you have on this stage an artist from outside of Nashville and outside of the genre performing a country song. She's also an artist who, through Lemonade and through all of her performances and appearances, Super Bowl, etc. was championing Black Lives Matter in Nashville on the CMA stage, probably going into that evening, there was like pushback on her being there.
And then to add in that she was singing with The Chicks. It's like another level. I think what happened when you watch that back to see an audience really divided, you have young female country artists who are singing, dancing, bopping away to all of it. And then you have male artists who are standing awkwardly.
And watching the rest of the crowd, like, how are we supposed to behave right now? But what happened afterwards, I think, is the major problem. Yes, there was definite questionable behaviour within the room, open racism, failed racism happening in the room and behind the scenes. But the explicit racism that happened online was really harmful, really dangerous.
And in response to it, the CMA pulled the video off their social media, rather than addressing it or saying this is not acceptable behaviour. Instead of condemning racism, they took the video down. And so, when Beyoncé, ten days leading up to the release, She acknowledged this event in her post about the album as being a very pivotal moment or a catalyst towards going back and doing the research to learn more about where country comes from and thus launched the creation of this project.
We already know from the bits that we've seen in the media that she's been making this album for a long time. It was like four or five years of writing and recording and production. She had a hundred songs that she whittled down to 27. So that moment was, is pivotal because it really marked an interesting point in the industry's history. A few years later, we have Lil Nas X being booted off the country chart, but it also, I think was very pivotal for Beyoncé artistically in what she then started to, to build after that moment.
Vinita Srivastava: I'm wondering about some of the history of country music and the country music industry. So we went back to say 2016, but we can go back to even the 1920s. And I know, Jada, your research talks about how the country music industry developed in the 1920s, and how it developed along a musical colour line that echoed or mimicked or just mirrored the Jim Crow segregation. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Jada Watson: Yeah, I think that this is a really important piece of history that a lot of folks who work in the industry today either don't know or don't think impacts them, but I see this not just as an origin story, but a story that's been maintained for a hundred years in various ways.
When we speak about the origins of the recorded music industry. We often go back to the 1920s and those Bristol sessions that launched the careers of artists like Jimmy Rogers and the Carter family. But what was happening in those sessions, and the sessions that were happening all around the United States and the South, was this very careful separation of artists who were actually making the same music.
They were often collaborating, they were playing in the same style. It was a very multicultural space in which music was being made, and when the music industry started to form, record labels were divided into hillbilly records and race records. And so hillbilly records became the marketing label on which white artists would record and which would then be promoted to white rural audiences. And race records was the marketing category through which Black artists would be recorded and they would be promoted to Black urban audiences. And so these two categories, which had nothing to do with musical style, because if you listen to those early records, you'd actually hear a lot of similarities, or you'd actually wonder, how are these decisions being made?
Because stylistically, there was no reason for them to be apart. They actually became firmly embedded in the industry. So in addition to these record labels being divided this way, it then impacted where they were distributed. So hillbilly record artists would then go perform live on white owned radio stations and artists who recorded on race records would then go perform live on Black owned radio stations.
So you have a, a label structure that is segregated. You then have a radio structure disseminating this music via a segregated structure. And then in the 1940s, Billboard developed its popularity charts, which were originally called Folk and the Harlem Hit Parade, and the Harlem Hit Parade was renamed race records, and then in 49 becomes the two terms that have stuck with them basically ever since, Country and Western and R&B.
And so music that had never had a stylistic difference, but was divided by race and ethnicity of its artists came over time to develop what we now call genre classifications of country and Western and R&B. And those two labels have stuck and they still structure the industry today. They still structure charts.
They still structure where data comes from to generate those charts. They still structure the label division within the industry. So when anyone talks in the country industry about how this is a white space or it's predominantly white artists, like really need to think, why is it this way and what are the mechanisms that allowed it to be this way and remain this way?
This is why I'm into data. If we start following the data trail, we can see how firmly the market was used. to cement and re cement and perpetuate these segregated systems.
Vinita Srivastava: I think that's part of the reason when I was talking about your work, I just find it so amazing. You talk about how data reinforces these capitalistic, patriarchal, white supremacist values that have governed the country music industry for a century.
Jada Watson: I was rereading the chapter this morning on sonic sharecropping, and that is a mechanism that allows. These systems to stay in place. So Alexis, your work is so, so important, so critical and foundational. What, what you're articulating is like the business practice that allows this sort of like larger, I call it a data regime of the market to remain in place because it allows them to manipulate and exploit artists in really harmful ways.
I'm so grateful to have. your work, because what I miss by looking at what I do is the interpersonal, but you bring the interpersonal of those daily business decisions to the fore in such a powerful way.
Vinita Srivastava: Yeah. Let's talk about your book, Alexis. You use a term in your book and you call it sonic sharecropping. And it's partly the idea of making money off of the work of Black women. So, maybe you can help us fit that idea of sonic sharecropping into this conversation that we're having now.
Alexis McGee: Yeah, when I was writing that chapter, I was so angry, but also so flabbergasted, quite honestly, how people make money off of Black women's voices.
This is a system that has been developed. It's a system that's been used. It's a system that's been fine tuned. It's a system that has evolved intentionally to continue this manipulation. And so what I was initially thinking of when I. Came upon that idea of sonic sharecropping is thinking of Black history month, where Black women would be asked to speak on some sort of topic, but it's often a particular topic.
It's often at a particular time, it's not coming with any sort of pay. So we're doing free labour. And so when I started to delve deeper into that experience, I was struck by how. intentional it really is. I really got a sense of this when I was reading Ruth Brown's uh, autobiography and she was talking about I'd built this record label. I'd built Atlantic Records because I did all of these songs, because I recorded all of these songs in the way that the recording company wanted me to record them. This isn't what I wanted to do. This is what they told me I would do, and I went with it because I had, I didn't know any better. I needed money. I needed to survive.
And it really was reinforcing the fact that our life situations, the things that we have to navigate as Black women, such as patriarchy, racism, sexism, it really is a choice of, do I want to eat or do I want to take a high ground on my moral standards? That's not a realistic choice that we are given.
And so, you know, Thinking about how Ruth Brown steered strongly into a particular direction to create music, to manifest these wishes on behalf of the recording company in good faith, then to find out that this good faith is really just employed to make money for somebody. Who is already in a better position, sort of like, I was gut wrenching because I'm like, we still do this today, right?
The people who ask women of colour, marginalized folks to do more work are often the people who then profit off of that work that somebody else is doing. And so in sonic sharecropping, I sort of likened this idea to, sharecropping in the South in the Jim Crow era or pre Jim Crow era of right after Reconstruction, where Black folk who were just enslaved are then forced to till the lands, to, to grow crops, to then sell crops to people who, you Would hike up to prices and keep the difference for themselves.
They barely got enough money to repeat the same process next year, to repeat the same process of growing, of tilling, of cultivating the land to, to then profit somebody else and all these intermediaries and different subsidies that would then profit off of the work that they do. And it was, it was seeing that reflected in the music industry.
With Ruth Brown, she created these genres, created these works, recorded them. And then she had to pay to record them. So she was paying somebody else to do that technological work, to, to lay the tracks, to produce the vinyl, to produce the shellac, and then it would be given to different recording houses, given to different outlets to then play the records, but as Jada mentioned, there's smaller venues to have the records play. So the majority of Ruth Brown's salary would come from performing on live circuits. And in that instance, then you also have to pay to rent a van. You also have to pay the band members. You have to pay everyone in your entourage. You have to pay the places where you would go and perform.
All of these extra steps are increasing in price. They're taking away from what you get after each show and oftentimes, we hear these stories of these Black artists who then just have to sleep in the van. Go to one specific place because it's the only place that we could eat while on tour.
Vinita Srivastava: When you say you go to specific places on tour, you're talking about traveling in towns that are racially segregated. So, therefore needing to sleep in the van or needing to know exactly where, where it's safe to go.
Alexis McGee: Right, exactly. Even with the places with live performances, not all of the places would allow mixed audiences. One of the stories that Ruth Brown tells is that she performed, there was nothing in their contracts that said you had to get paid before you perform.
So when she performed at one place and then they didn't pay her or they shorted her. This is something that happened with a lot of the early Black performers. So it was a really unfair situation. It was very much like sharecropping in the South because all of these extra things that you needed to do to produce something, to make a livelihood. was then taxed or stolen or manipulated in a way where you had no outlet to say this was wrong because you could very well be killed. Sharecropping isn't done, it isn't over, it's just sort of manifested in different ways. It's the same idea of asking someone who is marginalized, asking Black women to do the work on someone else's behalf, to not get credit, to not get paid, and then to become erased eventually.
It's very anti Black in its embodiment, in its nature, and it's intentional most of the time. With Ruth Brown's examples saying, we want this particular Black woman to do this work for us because she doesn't know what she's doing. And we're going to exploit that. This is a thing. Voice and bodies are manipulated for these capitalistic, patriarchal, racist structures.
And it comes in many forms and to think that this is something that's not tied to something else over here is just mind boggling to me because everything is connected.
Vinita Srivastava: I really want to talk to Jada about that. On the surface, you've said that the racism in the music industry in Nashville appears to have changed or there was like a lot of work done. So some of the things that Alexis just mentioned, that there's supposedly some awareness of that and that there was a desire to change it, but you have said that those changes are all on the surface. So, I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about that. What's happening today in this regard?
Jada Watson: You asked a question earlier that I don't know that was fully answered. And so I'm going to do it by way of Beyoncé. You had asked, is this really changing? Is this really impacting? What does it mean?
And I want to first, I think, go back to that question and say, Beyoncé is the ninth Black woman to ever chart on the Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart. The first was Linda Martell She charted three songs.
In the years following her, Ruby Falls charted 9, The Pointer Sisters charted 1. In 1987, both Dona Mason and Nisha Jackson each charted a song. In 1988, Kathy Bee charted a song. In 2008, 2009, Rissi Palmer charted three songs. And then in 20 15, 16, Mickey Guyton charted two different songs.
And it's really important that we say their names because without them there could not be a Beyoncé charting these songs. And I don't wanna diminish at all the achievement and the artistic value of these songs. That Beyoncé's releasing, but I'm mindful that there is a very deep history of Black women contributing to country music, and these are just the women that charted. This doesn't include Virginia Kirby. This doesn't include Esther Phillips. This doesn't include Tina Turner. This doesn't include The Supremes. This doesn't include the many, many R&B women who also recorded country covers and albums, who, by nature of the tag R&B, were played on certain stations, were sold in certain bins in record stores, who charted on certain charts. They could chart in one place but not the other, even if they were country songs, country covers of country songs.
That is such a deep history that really we're only fully learning about now thanks to the work of Rissi Palmer and her show Color Me Country, who's doing the work to find the artists, to tell their stories, to get their music up online and out in the world and shared.
Beyoncé absolutely should be played on country radio. These are country songs. They should not be ignored by the format at all. But they're only playing Beyoncé. They're not also playing Tiera Kennedy, Tanner Adell, Reyna Roberts, Brittney Spencer, Mickey Guyton, Rissi Palmer. They're not playing their music. So it's really hard to be celebratory within the country industry space because it's not creating pathways in the way that the country industry works.
We're seeing a rise in streaming, and that is wonderful. We're seeing a rise in follows on social media, and that's so integral. But until country radio starts playing their songs. This isn't going to have an impact on country mainstream industry, as it is business in Nashville.
We're seeing the social media follows, we're seeing the uptick in streams, and those are really valuable, but there's no money with that. Artists make .003 cents on a spin. And so, in an industry where it takes a lot of capital to be a musician, to make music, record music, distribute music, tour music, make merch. All of these things come with big price tags that independent artists, it takes a lot of capital.
And so it's really hard because I'm very conflicted. I'm very excited to see what this song and album can do. But on a deeper industry level behind the scenes, I'm not convinced. And it's not up to Beyoncé to do this. This is not her goal. It's not her mission. It, it certainly can't be done on her shoulders alone. It's But I'm very mindful that there are hundreds of Black artists, women in particular, who are not having the same opportunities. And until that happens, the deeper issues within the industry are not going to change.
And I really don't want to be negative because I'm very excited. I'm just also very mindful that they don't have Beyoncé bank accounts.
Vinita Srivastava: I think even though you're saying Beyoncé success, and of course it is success, you're also saying that top of the Billboard country chart, but radio play is still an issue, not just for these Black women artists that you've mentioned, but also for Beyoncé.
Jada Watson: She's getting country radio airplay. I'm the biggest critic of country radio, but they're playing her and they're playing her in a capacity that is unlike a Black woman ever before her, but also unlike any new single. Those songs have been out for seven weeks and she's already within the 30s of the charts. If this was a typical country single, she wouldn't even be on the charts yet. And I say that because it's remarkable.
Vinita Srivastava: Okay, I saw 30s and I'm like, "Oh, she should be number one. What's happening?"
Jada Watson: An airplay only chart is actually a much slower moving chart because it's only calculating what's happening on radio.
So a typical song will be played within radio for anywhere from 6 to 10 weeks before it cracks the top 50. So she actually debuted after 6 days of airplay on all of the airplay charts. So, Country, the radio format, has played her, and they are playing her, and she's climbing, she's not diminishing, and she's being played in the day parts, which is also big.
Vinita Srivastava: So do you think it opens a door to help out other Black artists who have been in Country music for a while?
Jada Watson: No, and this for me is where it's really hard because it should be. It is an obvious door to creating that opportunity. But I check every week. And other than Beyoncé, there were only seven spins for songs by Black women last week.
Vinita Srivastava: Alexis, is there something that you would like to see in the music industry? Or is there something else that you would like to talk about?
Alexis McGee: I echo Jada's concerns and her thoughts on this is an obvious door. I want to see more. I want to see more equality, more representation, more history, more acknowledgement of the history. But to change directions completely, the sonic rhetorical aspects of this new album.
And I think what is so different about her previous albums is that she really leans into some particular types of like vocal demonstrations. that also signal that this is a country album for me. It's not so much as her usual falsetto. She can hit those notes, but there's like a different type of breathiness that is symbolic of some of the country genres, the older country tunes where it's like you skip an octave or this in, in between ranges, like hitting notes that aren't continuous. There's a particular sound that she is leaning into in this album that I find so cathartic and I want to explore more, because she's changing something with her voice and I think we need to recognize that this is her range, this is who she is, as Jada mentioned earlier, but there's also something different about it. She's evolving and it's a great evolution. It's something that she's always had in her repertoire, she just hasn't leaned into it as much.
Vinita Srivastava: In your book you say "fluid and evolving identity" and, and then you also use this phrase, "conjuring spaces for Black women's healing", which is such a beautiful phrase, and I think it's what you're saying in a way that we don't really know yet what she's enacting, but it's beautiful.
Alexis McGee: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Thank you.
Jada Watson: I love what you just said there about her voice and the thing that I hear more on this album than others is such a low voice. In AMERIICAN REQUIEM, she has this really low register that when I listen to folks sing, I feel that I can feel things in my body that don't sit right. And so when I hear that low voice, I feel it in a way that brings me discomfort. And I wonder what that's like for Beyoncé, because it sounds so much lower than anything she's done before. And in AMERIICAN REQUIEM, there's something about it that feels visceral to your ears. So I wonder like, if that resonates for you in that low ness of some of the tracks on this album.
Alexis McGee: Absolutely. We call the ekphrasis in, in rhetoric, it's like this feeling, this painting of a picture with using some of these words, the intonations of voice, the sound, the registers, the tone, the pitch, all these other things. I talked about this in another chapter of the book, thinking about Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit and like the personal experiences that are so intimately tied to lynching, right?
And it's passed on. It's it's something that we always sort of carry with us. And to have, this has to have been an album of trauma. To produce something that is so moving, so visceral, as you mentioned, so embodied, that it is picked up on those registers.
Is picked up and to have that as an opening track, I think is so telling, um, of the possibilities that we just haven't really, we haven't had time to sit with this because it's so new. But there's so much to this album, and I think that that is just like the tip of the iceberg and to think about how influential Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit is, some of that meaning is being manifested in this album as well, particularly the first song. There's definitely an intentionality there.
Vinita Srivastava: Thank you both so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
Alexis McGee: Yeah. Thank you for opening the space for the conversation. I had such a blast.
Jada Watson: Yeah. Thank you.
OUTRO
Vinita Srivastava: That's it for this episode of Don't Call Me Resilient. This was such a fun episode to work on, and our guests this week also had a great time.
We've put together a musical playlist of some of the tracks and people Jada Watson mentioned in this conversation, and also as always a resource list that you can check out in our show notes at theconversation.com. You can reach the team at dcmr@theconversation.com and be sure to follow us on Instagram @dontcallmeresilientpodcast.
Don't Call Me Resilient is a production of The Conversation. The series is produced and hosted by me, Vinita Srivastava. Our associate producer is Ateqah Khaki. Our student journalist is Husein Haveliwala. Krish Dineshkumar does our sound design and mixing. Our consulting producer is Jennifer Moroz. Lisa Varano is the managing editor of The Conversation Canada, and Scott White is the CEO. Zaki Ibrahim wrote and performed the music we use on the podcast, the track is called Something in the Water.