Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar had our souls and booties shaking with their surprise performance opening the 2016 BET Awards— though I should admit, I mostly cried. The performance was a beautiful extension of Beyoncé’s visual album, Lemonade. Before you read on, I highly recommend you watch their opening performance at the BET Awards. Come back after you’ve been baptized.
In Lemonade, Queen Bey portrays Oshun (as seen in the picture above), an Orisha (diety) from Yoruba culture. In her BET performance, Beyoncé seems to extend this homage to the beloved goddess. Orisha is the ruler of rivers and fresh water. She is water. Since all living things need water, She connects all living things. The water’s sounds carry Orisha’s whispers to all animals, who understand her without effort. Yoruba elders say Oshun is the “unseen mother present at every gathering.” She is everywhere. We experience her as beauty, love, and ecstasy.
Beyoncé and her dancers adorned black attire that mimicked tribal tattoos alluding to West African tribes. Before Beyoncé sings of freedom, all we see is red smoke, evocative of blood and police lights. Orisha is associated with deep yellow in Nigeria and most of the African diaspora. So far in the performance, there seems to be no signs of Orisha.
Upon closer inspection, we see a yellow light off-center, but still highlighting Beyoncé. There is Orisha’s yellow. Even if we do not sense Her, She is said to be omnipresent and omnipotent. She is there, backing up the Queen. Orisha can ride her dancers— in other words, possess. The light seems to ride Beyoncé and the transformation begins. We then realize that the stage is water. The performers have been with Orisha all along. “I’ma rain, I’ma rain.” Beyoncé is rain. “I’ma wade, I’ma wave.” Beyoncé is waves. Beyoncé becomes Orisha, the mother of birds and water herself.
When Oshun rides a woman, it is said that “She dances, flirts, then weeps— because no one can love Her enough and the world is not as beautiful as She knows it could be.” Weeping is a reflection of Oshun’s deep capacity for love and dire need to be loved. Weeping is not a weakness. Beyoncé’s tears, a vital source of healing and love, are the fuel to her angry cries for freedom, the greatest love one could ask for. “I’m telling these tears, ‘Go and fall away, fall away.’ May the last one burn into flames.” From the water comes the flames. In the heart of the flames is Orisha’s yellow, her guidance. And still, these flames would not be present or necessary if not for the violent red surrounding these black women, these forces of nature.
Throughout the performance, we’re given a visual dichotomy of fire and water. In the Western world, the two are seen as opposites; water extinguishes fire. In both Beyoncé’s visual performance and lyrics, fire and water are instead seen as one in nature. Her dancers awaken these forces of nature, splashing through the water, inciting the fire with their own feet. Meaning to say, black women are and will be proudly responsible for their own liberation.
If Beyoncé is Orisha, her dancers are Her priestesses. They dance and stomp to the rhythm of Beyoncé’s voice, just as Orisha’s priestesses do to the rhythm of water (Orisha’s voice). Together, the dancers perform in water to honor Orisha, much like priestesses do along the Osun River in Nigeria. The dancers gather water, relying on it, on Orisha, to guide and heal them again, just as runaway slaves did.
Men in white pants join the stage. Together, the performers stomp in solidarity, reminiscent of West African tribal dances. The ritual seems to call out for someone.
Then, a boy from the streets of Compton, Kendrick Lamar, rises from below.
Drenched in blood red, Kendrick drops a few new bars. He is shrouded by white smoke, as if to signal a hopeful future that has yet to become tangible. But this hopeful future will be actualized in black youth like Kendrick.
As Kendrick goes in, Beyoncé crouches down and dances in the famed rap squat pose, embracing her identity as a black American; her African and American roots come into full circle, embodied as one.
To have Beyoncé and Kendrick open for the BET Awards was a powerful and necessary statement. The importance of Lemonade is in its celebration of all blackness: Afro-Latinas, Africans, Afro-Caribbeans, Afro-Asians, black Americans (and the diversity within them)— I could go on and on. Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar recognize their history. They comprehend the oppression and violence their ancestors suffered to get to their own positions of wealth and social stature. They won’t let their freedom rot in hell. They will continue to run. They will continue to raise hell for their freedom. Fifty years later, Martin Luther King Jr.’s demands have not been satisfied. Black Americans demand what was promised to them — their constitutional guarantee. Black Americans demand freedom.
Text: Shanika Lazo
POWERFUL. This needs more readers. Thank you.
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