Beyoncé's 'Renaissance' pays tribute to the LGBTQ community and the underground ballroom culture that originated in New York City.

Between Bells

Beyoncé Pays Tribute to Ball Culture 

Welcome back to Between Bells. Yes, it's been two weeks since Queen be Blessed the world with her new album renaissance and naturally we can't stop listening to it. The first single, you just heard It Break My Soul was stream nearly 19 million times just last week and that isn't the only history. It's making all 16 songs from the project. All of them are charge on the billboard hot 100 renaissance also tops the billboard 200 album chart. Making Beyonce the first female artist to do so in seven months. I know, wow and if you think that's not a huge deal, well you're wrong. But also the last female artist chart at number one was Adele when she released another amazing album. Of course that was the fourth studio album 30 and the obsession over renaissance isn't exactly a surprise considering anything Beyonce touches turns to gold but this time around the reason so many can't get enough have changed. Not only is Queen bee breathing life back into disco and house, but she's also paying ha to the L G B T. Q community and more importantly, Ball culture ahead of the album's release, Beyonce dropped these photos inspired by iconic moments in ballroom history recognizing ballroom legends like pepper Lob asia and Octavia ST Laurent. Well let's take a step back for decades, ballroom or Ball or house culture has been away for queer black and latino people to live their best lives through elaborate performances, incorporating and commenting on race, class and gender. The Ball community has always pushed back against society forming its own version of X Ball culture first stepped on the scene here in New York City, believe it or not. Back in the 1920s in the beginning, performers were mostly white men doing drag fashion shows, but by the 1960s, black members of the community had enough of the discrimination they were facing and formed their own underground ball community. By the 80s and 90s, the underground ball community had exploded throughout New York City houses or families were formed and many houses competed against one another in categories ranging from real ness to voguing And no, we are not talking about Madonna. In fact, the art of voguing wasn't created by the singer at all, but was instead named after Vogue magazine and the poses that models would do in spreads. Voguing quickly became a favorite category in ballroom and was even highlighted in the critically acclaimed 1990 documentary Paris is burning take a look. Voguing came from shade because it was a dance that two people did because they didn't like each other. Instead of fighting, you would dance it out on the dance floor and whoever did the better moves was throwing the best shade, basically, no touching neither one of you, if you touch, I'm chopping you, I'm telling you right now, I'm obsessed with this today, ballroom culture and voguing are widely seen and celebrated in the mainstream. You can see it in everything from social media to critically acclaimed tv shows like FX's pose or HBO max's legendary, many ballroom icons such as Leo me Maldonado says it's been amazing to see ball culture accepted by so many take a listen, I love it, I feel like it's been a long time coming and being a part of that movement of bringing ballroom to mainstream has been you know, a huge part of my journey and something that has kept me, you know humble, has kept me being open and and being um open to sharing not only what ballroom is but to sharing the culture and why it's so important to everyone and to the stable culture continues to evolve as more generations emerge, adding their own style and flair to the community. But no matter how much it grows, ball culture will always serve as a safe place for marginalized groups to feel at home. You know, Beyonce certainly didn't bring it to the mainstream, but we, I think more and more people just listening to this album are if they might not know about it, which may be a little surprising, especially older generations are now looking into it. I think she exposed it to even more of the population and demographic. Yeah, definitely, and I love this deep dive that we did because you learn something new every time and realizing just how much of a resource this was for marginalized communities, the L G. B. T Q plus community, it reminds me a lot of how when Beyonce said she dropped this album, she was trying to create a safe space for herself and ultimately for her fans. And I think that is just incredible artistry to be able to look to the Pass, asked to history and try to bring something new forward, not just remixing something but adding something to it. Um, so one thing we can say the Queen bee, she does her work and it's really exciting to see it done in this way, in paying homage in this way. Absolutely. There's a reason she's called Queen Bee, whether you're a fan of Beyonce or not, I think you can't respect the artistry really well said.