Beyoncé Channels The Mother Goddess In Her Grammys Performance
By Ani Bundel
Beyoncé channeled the Mother Goddess Oshun in her performance at the Grammys tonight, reminding us that all women must persevere.
Beyoncé’s highly anticipated performance this evening at the Grammys was a new extension and meditation on the original themes of her Lemonade album. In the original album, she pushed us to look to our past to help us guide our future, and touched on themes such as the goddess Oshun, and the afro-spiritual tradition she represents, motherhood, and the passing of the generations.
Some of those original lines from the album took on far deeper meanings tonight as we watched Bey, now heavily pregnant with twins, act out the relevant portions of her album. “Do you remember being born?”…. “You mother’s hips, cracking….” The whole sequence took on an immediate and visceral tone, as we considered that in fact she is now speaking to her unborn babies in the womb, who will soon crack her hips in order to enter the world.
The entire performance was something else, and there was nothing like it on stage, other than perhaps Bruno Mars’ Prince tribute, that even came close to it.
Another major feature of the performance was Beyoncé’s reliance on video as well as lighting and the digital mixed with the actual. This is not the first time she’s done this trick–her “Run The World (Girls)” live performance a few years used much the same trick to show us an army of Beyoncés dancing with her. In this case, it also helped function as a crutch–after all, Beyoncé does not want to exhaust herself performing in her condition live, and having herself doing the moves, wearing far less than she actually was on stage in video format interchanged with her real self made the piece probably more manageable for everyone.
Next: Grammys 2017: Live Winners and Results
And in terms of OMG moments, it was certainly one for the record books. Long live Beyoncé’s Matriarchy.