“So why isn’t it common knowledge that disco, house music, techno and electro, and all these other genres also came from Black American communities?”

But dance music is as American as rock ’n’ roll, hip-hop, country, or R&B and is just as serious and important a genre.

that may change the industry and shift the way we think about dance music, house music specifically.

She released the first single, “Break My Soul” in June, which used a sample of Robin S.’s “Show Me Love” and incorporated house music elements.

If that’s the case, then music that’s designed to be joyful and make you dance can’t be good, right?

Americans are, at a very young age, taught to be suspicious of joy.

Kendrick Lamar, SZA, Lizzo, H.E.R., Nicki Minaj, Neo, Rico Nasty, Jennifer Hudson, Megan Thee Stallion, Ciara, Alicia Keys, Tauren Wells, Rhianna, Normani, Tyler the Creator, Lecrae, Beyoncé. You get the idea.

Hip-hop and rap were at the forefront of pop culture

She did everything musically and was an excellent performer and dancer. She deserves to have more recognition rather than only being known for her career-ending mishap.

Now if we are talking about Black music history, we need to talk about the Jacksons.

But I need to pay homage to rock’s origins in rock ’n’ roll.

the layers of instrumental scales and combinations that this era of music is known for. Piano, saxophone, bass, drums, all unique in their sound and function in performance, but they all come together to form one beautiful piece of music.

blues, jazz and funk.

This is why it’s not uncommon to see singers, like the legendary Aretha Franklin, labeled as both gospel and soul singers.

Combing elements of gospel, R&B and later funk

If you go back and listen to gospel vinyl, all of that is pure talent. The breath control, the vibrato and the variety of ranges

The first wave of Black music that changed our culture was gospel.

We are reminded of this daddy’s Blacknessboth sonically and visually in the Lemonade visual album

When Beyoncé’s and the Chicks’ voices meld in harmony withthose lines about the father, gun and head held high, there is gloryand dignity in this image

“Daddy Lessons” teaches his daughter to fight.In encouraging her to “be tough,” learning how to shoot his rifle,riding motorcycles duded up in classic vinyl and leather, the fatherencourages his daughter to both defend herself and to take care ofher mother and sister—that is, to take the place as the head of thefamily, a place usually reserved for sons.

The album’s imagery, sometimesjarring, sometimes intimate, moves from home movies of wed-dings and living rooms to surreal plantation landscapes to starklylit spaces where entertainment and sex work seem to meld

Freedom”: “I need freedom, too”—Beyoncé’sinsistence that she was not an exception because of her celebrity.

’d blast Lemonade from myaging Honda Fit’s speakers,

, listening while a white facultymember confessed that he was afraid of this same student’s an-ger; writing in support of an indispensable administrative assistantwhose hours were being chipped away, until she was forced intoearly retirement.

Many of us were enraged by the recent violent loss ofBlack lives to police violence

Fans of modest means scrambled to viewthe visual album for themselves

Lemonade had already become a culturalphenomenon, embraced passionately by the Black women that Iknew: my students, my colleagues, my friends.

And as the parent of a Black girl child, I struggle to findmodels for her to express her anger, especially as she grows older.

“Daddy Lessons” features many country elements, including a har-monica solo, banjo, twangy guitar, a stomping 2/4 beat, plenty ofyips and yeehaws, and a central country music storytelling trope:the outlaw, gun-brandishing daddy.

artists likeCowboy Troy, Kid Rock, Nelly, and others.

Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road”in 2019.

white artists have trafficked inBlackness by embracing “everything but the burden.”1

Blackness’s association inmainstream white culture with danger, illegality, and outsiderhoodwas put to use in Cash’s career to lend an element of authenticity.

did provide aspace for a performance of anti-authoritarianism that was oftenallied sonically, and sometimes visually, with Blackness.

disgusted by the chillytreatment that Beyoncé received backstage

“Figures they would pair up. One whohas no respect for the American military and another who has norespect for the American law enforcement. Ashamed they wouldbe allowed to perform at the CMAs at all.”

“Fuck Beyoncé she supports thugs plus her music is garbage.”

Many country music fans and commentators took issue withBeyoncé’s and the Chicks’ performance at the CMAs, some al-luding to Beyoncé’s vocal support of Black Lives Matter2 and theChicks’ criticism of George W. Bush during his 2003 invasion ofIraq.

This was the Chicks’ firstappearance on the CMAs since being blackballed by many main-stream country music institutions and fans angered by their leftistpolitics.

she andher band were some of the very few Black people present at aceremony that has always been predominantly white.

I want to show up whereI’m not expected and rock the house, bring the people to theirfeet.

he song segues into the Chicks’ “Long Time Gone,”their Grammy- and CMA-winning hit from 2002, their own songabout daddys and old lessons that we might have outgrown.

“Texas!”—the location of their shared roots, how-ever distinct their individual experiences of that Texas might be.

specially timely,given that the past year had seen an intensified and often vola-tile bifurcation of racialized public discourse

joining of a country and R&B

ON NOVEMBER 2, 2016, a few days before the fateful presidentialface-off in the United States between Hillary Clinton and Don-ald Trump,

"This ain't a Country album. This is a 'Beyoncé' album.

"The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me.

"It feels good to see how music can unite so many people around the world, while also amplifying the voices of some of the people who have dedicated so much of their lives educating on our musical history.

"It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed … & it was very clear that I wasn't.

It took three decades & a cover by a white man for Tracy Chapman to make history as the first black woman with a sole songwriting credit on a number 1 country hit.

She's also won more Grammys than any other artist – at 32.

"My hope is that years from now, the mention of an artist's race, as it relates to releasing genres of music, will be irrelevant."

"I feel honored to be the first Black woman with the number one single on the Hot Country Songs chart.

Daddy Lessons was reportedly rejected by the Recording Academy's music committee when it was submitted for a Grammy in the country category

Act I: Renaissance has dance, disco & house tracks on it & 2016's Lemonade features a mash of genres including the country-inspired Daddy Lessons.

An Oklahoma radio station wouldn't play her singles 'til her fans revolted.

When in February, the recording artist released the country-inspired singles Texas Hold 'Em & 16 Carriages, while announcing there would be a new album on the way, the reaction was feverish, but mixed.

Music became an iconic symbol of black difference and a recognized source of communal identity

those musical qualities with analogous connections to the historical (and in some cases, recent) homeland of the slaves—varied according to regional differences determined by the density of the black population in relation to that of the white ruling classes.

considered “barbaric”

slave advertisements, runaway slave notices, personal travel journals, and memoirs, white observers noted both the musical talents of and the distinct body of music making taking place among the slaves.

Blacks who received training in Colonial-era singing schools are part of a long tradition of participating in Eurological practices that continues into the 21st century.

early American religious music would through a series of sonic and ideological developments become wholly “American,” though in a persistent relationship—adaptations, rejections, and importations—with European models.

Despite the ingenious and hideous development of laws and social practices designed to keep black slaves subservient they nonetheless asserted their aspirations, senses of beauty and the sublime, their frustrations, pain, and humanity through sound organization.

Between the 15th century and mid-19th century close to 12 million Africans were captured and transported to the New World, with the greatest number imported to Brazil and other locations in the Caribbean sugar industry.