The singer’s Coachella concert documentary reveals her intimate humanity, celebrates the culture that built her, ousts stereotypes and redefines blackness
‘You can’t be what you can’t see.” A quote from African American children’s rights activist Marian Wright Edelman flashes on screen halfway through Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé, a two-hour Netflix special that goes behind the scenes of her landmark 2018 Coachella headline set. “It’s hard to believe that after all these years, I was the first African American woman to headline Coachella,” Beyoncé says in voiceover, as the camera dwells on a stuffed ring binder bearing the words “BEYCHELLA 2018”. “It was important to me that everyone who had never seen themselves represented felt like they were on that stage with us.”
In April last year, Beyoncé brought the culture of historically black colleges and universities to the California festival (and thousands of viewers watching the live stream), choreographing 200 performers – including an all-black marching band, dancers of all sizes, her sister Solange – on a giant pyramid the height and breadth of the stage. She referenced the Egyptian queen Nefertiti, and sang Lift Every Voice and Sing, a cry for hope and liberation known as the black national anthem. “I wanted us to be proud of not only the show, but the process,” Beyoncé says in Homecoming. “Thankful for the beauty that comes with a painful history.” Her performance was exciting, regal and black in celebration: “Beyoncé is bigger than Coachella,” the New York Times declared.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2UH7dKx
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