Beyoncé’s Renaissance Transcends Time
Photo by Simon Noh on Unsplash
Like everyone else, I am in love with Renaissance. I’ve had it on repeat since it came out, but if you really want to see me in my element, I’ll be dancing to Alien Superstar and claiming every affirmation in the song, imagining myself in a cosmic galaxy of my own making. Renaissance is a retro-future album that masters the art of time travel, placing us at the center of the vinyl and spinning us into the past, the present, and a multitude of alternate futures.
It is an album for this moment in our lives, 16 tracks that beckon us to move our bodies and work through the pent up energy of the last 2, 4, and—let’s be real—6 years. The climate is heating up, headlines steady reporting on new COVID variants and now, monkey pox. As if the angel of death floating around the globe for the last two years was not enough, lives continue to perish as man wages war against his fellow humans. In the U.S., we elected a new president to relieve us the torture of witnessing white nationalism on the rise, but we still can’t escape the erosion of our basic human rights.
Renaissance is not an attempt at cultural commentary as much as it is a sonic salve. As African diaspora people, it’s impossible to overlook the power of dance as a practice in embodiment. And in a time when we have had to be increasingly conscious of our bodies in relation to one another, maintaining six-feet apart from other humans, touch deprivation and social isolation, finding a way back into ourselves is a necessary step in healing forward, even as crisis continues to rage.
In her excellent review, DJ scholar Lynneé Denise breaks down the deeply spiritual origins of house music, a genre that offered refuge and salvation to the world’s damned: the U.S.-based gay, lesbian, trans, and queer folks of the diaspora who self-affirmed their own humanity as rhythm found its way into their bones and freed them the way only music can sometimes. In a different era marked by death and danger, the originators of ballroom culture and dance music created their own alternate futures through sound, vogueing, sashaying and splitting time open with movement.
Even if Renaissance does not “heal” you, it’ll set your limbs free if you let it. It is an album for the social butterfly ready to shake her hips, surrounded by other sweaty bodies once more. It’s an album for the weary home-bound who isn’t quite comfortable being around others yet, but will turn the volume all the way up and float around their bedroom or kitchen, singing and dancing at the top of their lungs. It’s an album that gives us permission to groove for over an hour straight, to forget, even if for a brief moment that the world is on fire, and to instead drop deep into our own body, and feel the timelessness of sound.
Beyoncé and her team were intentional about creating a timeless album, and that adjective is not a hyperbole. It is an album that celebrates the consistent drivers of culture—the outcasts. Renaissance may not change the world, but 50 years from now, it will be a symbol of this era, of the timeless resilience of humans even in the face of death and destruction—our undeniable ability to find the groove and let it move us from despair into the future.
Renaissance is THE moment right now and rightfully so. For more excellent reads, writer Alexis Oatman created a great thread of thoughtful pieces covering Renaissance and its cultural significance.