The inclusive nature of the pop star's concerts can feel transformative — if not transcendent.
Is Beyoncé the greatest entertainer of all time? That's not an open question as far as Michael Eric Dyson is concerned. He's already on the record in his 2021 book "Entertaining Race: Performing Blackness in America" as pronouncing Queen Bey "without question the greatest entertainer this globe has ever seen." You might reflexively doubt this assertion, but Dyson does an excellent job in this very entertaining interview segment from "Late Night With Stephen Colbert" of parrying counterarguments in favor of Prince, James Brown, Diana Ross and others. |
The real question at the heart of Dyson's latest guest essay for Opinion is: Can attending a Beyoncé concert be a religious experience? To that, his answer is a resounding yes — or perhaps a loud amen. It's certainly true that the modern concert, which gathers like-minded acolytes in an enclosed physical space to, quite often, experience something close to spiritual rapture, has no more obvious analogue than a church service. And this year, perhaps thanks to a pent-up, post-pandemic appetite for communal spectacle, concerts did seem to turn into transcendent events. |
But a Beyoncé concert specifically, Dyson argues, can offer something more than communion with the flock: It can model a kind of inclusiveness that many modern churches would do well to learn from. For many of Beyoncé's queer fans, her recent tour has felt especially affirming, given that the music of "Renaissance" draws on a Black queer tradition of club, house and disco — a debt she's explicitly acknowledged. |
We might sometimes forget that "sanctuary" has at least two meanings in a religious context: a sacred, consecrated place, and also a place of safety and refuge. The conversation around this year's big concert tours has largely focused on the difficulty of accessing them — the expensive admission, the elusive tickets. But as Dyson reminds us, once we make it to them, concerts can provide rare spaces that allow us to feel truly welcome as we are, and part of a community much larger than ourselves. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
Forward this newsletter to friends to share ideas and perspectives that will help inform their lives. They can sign up here. Do you have feedback? Email us at opiniontoday@nytimes.com. |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment