It didn’t take long for the outrage machine to get churning following Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s performance at the Super Bowl halftime show on Feb. 17. Sharing the field and stage with Coldplay and Bruno Mars, Beyoncé’s performance raised ire—mostly among conservative white Americans—for a number of reasons.
Many complained of the outfits the singer and her backup dancers wore—black leather suits and berets reminiscent of the Black Panthers—while others had something to say about the “X” pattern the dancers made on the fields. The song is named “Formation,” after all, but many saw it as a nod to Malcolm X. The dancers also pumped their fists into the air, another homage to the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
The critics and pundits who took to the 24-hour news channels to voice their displeasure deemed this display unacceptable. Given the ongoing national dialogue regarding black Americans, violence, and law enforcement—with the Black Lives Matter movement at the epicenter—critics saw the performance as an endorsement of the movement, which they claim carries an “anti-police” message.
“It’s inciting bad behavior,” National Sheriff’s Association Executive Director Jonathan Thompson told The Washington Post. “Art is one thing, but yelling fire in a crowded theater is an entirely different one.”
Even though the lyrics of “Formation” make no reference to law enforcement, or the view that black Americans disproportionally fall victim to violence at the hands of law enforcement, the imagery of the performance and the music video—released the day prior to the Super Bowl—have been construed as just that.
The claim that art that reflects on an issue may in turn cause it is a spurious one, but others doubled down on the claim, including Rutherford County Sheriff Robert Arnold, from Tennessee, who suggested that shots fired outside his home days after the Super Bowl may very well have been spurred by Beyoncé’s performance, even though the investigation into the shooting is ongoing.
“With everything that’s happened since the Super Bowl, and with law enforcement as a whole, I think we’ve lost five to seven officers, five deputy sheriffs since the Super Bowl, that’s what I’m thinking,” Arnold said, according to the New York Daily News. “You have Beyoncé’s video and that’s kind of bled over into other things about law enforcement.”
The angry masses on social media included those who blamed the song for violence against law enforcement, or at least considered it an endorsement. Others made no such arguments, but instead took to social media platforms to criticize Beyoncé’s character, her appearance, and her music, often in posts laden with vitriol and slurs.
And yet, the reaction isn’t a complete surprise to those who know their music history. Blaming black artists for social issues and disparaging their appearance or behavior isn’t anything new in America.
Let’s rewind a century, when ragtime took the country by storm, with its syncopated rhythms and jaunty style inspiring new forms of dance and musical ensembles. The style was originated by black Americans like Scott Joplin, whose education in Western music and cultural connection to Africa and American slaves (Joplin’s father was a freed slave and violinist) helped them create a unique fusion of Western tonality with African-inspired rhythms.
Ragtime was beloved by Americans of all races and quickly became a pervasive style of popular music. This was not to the liking of the white establishment, in musical circles or other levels of society, who resented the style itself along with those who created it. Ragtime was also blamed for numerous problems: Its syncopated rhythm was blamed for irregular heartbeat by doctors, and opinion pieces in newspapers blamed it for street violence, domestic violence, rape, and “race mixing.”
Like the regional folk style of blues music, ragtime was deemed the “Devil’s music,” and detractors said it would poison society to its core. The composer Edward Baxter Perry gave a famous 1918 critique of the style that reveals the contempt leveled at the new music forged by black Americans.
“Ragtime is syncopation gone mad and its victims can be treated successfully, in my opinion, like the dog with rabies, with a dose of lead,” Perry said. “Whether it is simply a passing phase of our decadent art culture or an infectious disease that has come to stay, like leprosy, time alone can tell.”
This outrage was directed at a style of music that most today consider a quaint relic associated with silent films. But ragtime wasn’t trying to make a political statement, like Beyoncé’s “Formation,” and it was still blamed.
When jazz artists a generation later began using their massive influence to bring about social change, it didn’t make their lives any easier either. The FBI had an extensive file on the famous jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong, who voiced positions firmly against segregation. Armstrong also refused to perform a goodwill concert in the Soviet Union because of the government’s inaction in Little Rock, Ark., after National Guard troops barred black students from attending Central High School at the order of Gov. Orval Faubus.
Billie Holiday often feared for her life after she began performing “Strange Fruit,” a short and somber song about lynching in the South. The poet who wrote the lyrics to the song, Abel Meeropol, was also called before an official hearing that pressed him on possible ties to communism, actually asking him if the song was penned at the behest of the communist party.
Direct criticisms of these early protest songs were drowned out, however, by the wave of general prejudice toward jazz and those who wrote and performed it. Much like ragtime, which preceded it, and its descendants, rock ’n’ roll and hip-hop, jazz became the scapegoat on which critics laid the blame for a number of societal issues.
And yet, today, all these styles of music are beloved cultural mainstays that foster nostalgia, and the anger and hate they inspired are hardly recalled. Those who enjoy R&B and hip-hop music today certainly aren’t complaining about Beyoncé’s performance at the Super Bowl in the same way the aforementioned critics are. In fact, the halftime show was only a few million viewers away from breaking the Super Bowl ratings record. The new song has been met with positivity from millions of fans and many critics.
Could it be that the angriest among these commentators disparaging Beyoncé and “Formation” wouldn’t have listened to the song anyway? I think it’s safe to say—though I couldn’t speak for the artist—that this song wasn’t created for them in the first place.
Arts Editor Joe Payne has never felt threatened by music. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 3, 2016.