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Resurrection Our Way: On Beyoncé, Linda Martell, and Staging Our Own Renaissance

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Rev. Dr. Alisha Lola Jones

While “Cowboy Carter” brings country music’s black roots to the forefront, Beyoncé reminds us of the infinite power of legacy.

Have you ever been invited to a spot, only to seek out out that you just were obviously not welcome there?

Lord knows I’ve been there more times than I could anticipate or count. Each time this humiliation doesn’t diminish; but increasingly I’m learning the best way to emerge from these moments unscathed, stronger and brighter, within the hope that I’ll leave these places higher than once I arrived.

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Well, continuing the era of turning lemons into lemonade, Beyoncé’s recent album ‘Cowboy Carter’ she tries to point out how she handled similar experiences. According to Beyoncé, her recent album “was born out of an experience I had many years ago where I didn’t feel welcome… and it was very clear that I wasn’t.” Many assumed that the experience in query was the general public moment during which she was invited to perform “Daddy Lessons” on the 2016 Country Music Association Awards (CMA) – the moment she selected former industry darling The Dixie Chicks (now known simply as “The Chicks”) to hitch her on stage – only to find that she is an unwelcome presence.

“Some were outraged that Beyoncé and the Dixie Chicks, ostracized from the country music community, were allowed to perform at the 2016 CMA Awards,” Gerren Keith Gaynor reported for Grio on the time. Angry country music fans then forced the CMA to remove all traces of Beyoncé from its online recaps in a shocking gesture that amounted to erasure. While some have speculated that political differences between Beyoncé, The Dixie Chicks and the CMA’s core fans led to her performance being faraway from their platform, such erasure of disparate voices stays unprecedented within the entertainment industry. As an additional insult, despite removing it from its website and social media, the CMA continued to advertise free downloads of the performance in a very exploitative manner.

Instead of specializing in the anti-black comments and reception that Beyoncé experienced in purist country music circles, the Texas native staked her own claim to the genre and re-located our pioneers, giving them an area to talk and sing for themselves. He joins a growing procession of Black artists who’ve leveraged each the moment and the genre’s true legacy to reclaim their place within the country music industry.

In several tributes on “Renaissance, Act I” on “Cowboy Carter,” Beyoncé pays homage to the country music pioneer, designating her album break as “The Linda Martell Show.” While Martell herself questions the meaning of “genres,” Beyoncé pays homage to other black forebears in country music, surrounding her listeners with a sonic majesty that evokes the tradition of restorative justice and liberation theology present in Hebrews 12:1-2: :

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It’s no coincidence that Beyoncé pays tribute Linda Martell, the primary black woman to perform on the Grand Ole Opry in 1969. Capturing the essence of overcoming adversity and emerging with a legacy for future generations, Martell significantly influenced the genre together with her album “Color me, country” in 1970, marking a historic moment as the first major release by a black female artist in country music.

With the long-awaited release of “Cowboy Carter,” the newfound interest in Martell’s contributions, including the documentary and awards, highlights an overdue shift toward inclusivity and appreciation for diverse country music narratives and legacies.

Martell’s tributes not only celebrate her contributions, but also symbolize the resurrection of her story, reflecting Easter’s profound message of rebirth and triumph over oppression. We are reminded that there is always someone who has prepared the way for us to do what we do, big or small. We must say their names as in meditation, considering them a prayer of thanksgiving for the continuation of the work.

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As I think about Resurrection Sunday both as a theologian and musicologist, given my cultural upbringing, personal experiences, and academic and spiritual training, themes of empowerment and renewal are central to this commemoration by Christian believers. In African American culture, even if we do not believe or follow Christian practices, at the core of what we have experienced as a nation – and, as a result, the culture that has emerged for us as a people – speak parallel and unifying representations of hope, transformation, and empowerment. But aren’t these aspects of our lives what help us survive difficult situations, especially those in which we are told we don’t fit in?

In the Black prophetic tradition, our experiences as a people have deep meaning rooted in our history and are beacons that illuminate the source of the strength needed to overcome all pain, misery and conflict. This light illuminates our ability to embrace the promise that we will never be alone through all of this – and the ways in which we have “made it” – collectively and individually. Just as we understand that energy can never be created or destroyed, our ancestors understood us as energy beings for whom even death is not the end, but spiritually and physically it can be the beginning of something new.

The Good Friday premiere of Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” and the tribute to Linda Martell embody the essence of Easter’s message of resurrection, bringing untold stories to light and celebrating the revival of cultural narratives we have long needed to know and celebrate. It is a moving reminder of our ongoing journey toward justice and representation, ensuring that the legacies of ancestors like Martell are remembered and honored. Through this album and the tributes it contains, we are invited to reflect on broader themes of holding space, redemption and resurrection, highlighting the importance of remembering and celebrating those who have paved the way for a more inclusive and equitable future.

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The Rev. Dr. Alisha Lola Jones is a faith leader helping people navigate a dynamic world, as a consultant to numerous arts and faith-based organizations and as Professor of Music in Contemporary Societies on the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. She is an award-winning creator (Oxford University Press). For more information please visit DrAlisha.com.

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Celebrating Stevie Wonder’s 75th birthday with his greatest hits

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On May 13, 1950, the star was born in Saginaw, Michigan and it was no person aside from Stevland Hardaway Judkins, often called Stevie Wonder. Stevie is a music genius that delighted tens of millions of individuals with his incredibly beautiful catalog of songs. Black company He selected 13 from Stevie’s crucial songs to have a good time the sound of an actual master and motown sound. Stevie Wonder is a legend.

Happy birthday to the true one.

He throws me off my feet

“Knocking Me Off My Feet” fell in 1976 to the legendary album Stevie, is a jazz love song, which is perfectly useful that he feels someone, looks like someone.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cb0_yu4g6y

Golden Lady

“Golden Lady” appeared on the stage in 1973 on the album Stevie. This song is a smooth romantic number that flies under the radar. This is certainly one of Stevie’s most sleeping love songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxctjamr3ea

If you actually love me

“If you really love me” appeared in 1971 on the album Stevie ,. It defines a key moment in his profession, through which Stevie’s sound becomes a function. The song strikes in another way whenever you realize that he finds the voice.

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Part -time lover

So “Lover part -time” appeared in 1985 on the album Stevie. This is a really perfect mixture of classic Motown Vibrations with the shiny production of the 80s synthesizer. “A lover of part -time employed” has a melody that lives in your head for a lot of days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPDM6YGSB20

Lately

“Recently” fell in 1980 as a part of the Stevie Wonder album. It is such a harsh, painful ballad that somebody you’re keen on slowly drains away. Stevie really pours his heart and vocal to this. It is so boomed you could feel any ounce of pain in his voice.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bybqheygs

This time in my life

“For For Fer My Life” fell in 1968 on an album of the identical title. This is a sincere love anthem through which someone finally finds his person. It is performed with harsh emotions and soul and may easily give listeners goose bumps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3qi3e40awe

Signed, sealed, delivered (I’m yours)

“Signed, sealed, delivered (I’m Yours)” fell in 1970 on the album Stevie “SIGNTED, Sealed & Delived”. This song is value adding to your playlist. He is energetic and catchy. Stevie co -produced the song.

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Master Blaster (Jammin)

“Master Blaster (Jammin ‘)” debuted in 1980 on the album Stevie Wonder. “This is a superb tribute to Bob Marley with this unique Stevie Wonder Groove Ombudn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1yieti3ubw

Superstition

Stevie abandoned “Superstition” in 1972. Stevie doesn’t stop and offers funk and soul without effort.

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Is she not wonderful

“Not She She Lovely” dropped in 1976 as a part of the masterful album Stevie Wonder The Song Is Dedicated to his daughter Aisha And he’s entwined with a spiritual, characteristic game of Stevie harmonica. Stevie balances technical brilliance with harsh emotional honesty. This is unquestionably certainly one of those timeless gems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YGC6Rmoyf8

Don’t worry about something

“Don’t You Carth” Bout a Think “fell on the album in 1973. It has a Latin jazz atmosphere that makes you must move, in addition to these funny lyrics that may make you smile in your face. The whole song is largely a musical hug. It’s like a small pocket of the sun from the 70s, which never gets old.

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You did nothing

Oh wounds, “You Doted Nothin” “got here to the stage in 1974. He was hidden in Stevie Wonder’s absolutely good album. Why would you switch it? Well, this can be a splendidly funny political statement that Stevie directed straight to the Nixon administration during your entire Watergate mess. Cherry upstairs? He led Jackson 5 to borrow them harmonies in spare vocals. This is Vintage 70. Protest music from Groove, which still appears to be current.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0senglelxc

Happy birthday

Stevie abandoned “Happy Birthday” in 1981 on his album. He wrote it to press MLK on his birthday to change into a national holiday. Stevie is clever in how he mixed the climate with social activism, carrying a serious message about equality. MLK Day finally became official in 1983.

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This article was originally published on : www.blackenterprise.com
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Why do the demographic boom stay in their homes vs. Auxiliary life

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reports that the housing crisis can To be Brewing as a demographic boom Collect their houses and refuse MOVEW financially bored residential facilities.

Meredith Whitney, a financial analyst, said that the generation of the boom of demographic houses maintains hard -earned houses, because moving to residential assistance is equally expensive. During the interview, Whitney emphasized that some older Americans are attached to money and borrowing towards their homes. Forty -four percent of home equity loans are charged by seniors, which they call “contradictory”. “It’s crazy, right?” She preserved.

Whitney’s points of view are significantly different from the standard narrative that the majority of the demographic boom is financially secure and sits on money flaws. This shall be true because seniors constitute 42% of all houses buyers in comparison with generations who constitute 29%. “I divide it into various cohorts,” said Whitney.

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“So a senior who everyone thinks that” demographic booms have all this money ” – this is a small part. Seniors live withdrawals for payment. ”

The generation collectively has 75 trillion usd wealth. However, Whitney, also sometimes called “Oracle of Wall Street”, which provided for a incredible financial crisis, estimated that only one in 10 seniors can afford to assist in maintaining help, forcing many to stay in their homes with a mortgage surplus.

As a result, the rates created the “block” effect, described as when the owners of the house who got to the market at low rates, hesitate to purchase recent houses, bearing in mind today’s increased loan costs. “This is one of the problems with housing inventory,” said Whitney during the interview. “They stop longer in their homes because they can’t afford to move out.”

The weight is just not only on the demographic boom. Their thousand -year -old and generation X got stuck in an inaccessible long -term address aging parents. Because the elders not have funds for long -term care, in response to subsequent generations they typically leave work or work less to supply care. Social insurance experts Name it “victim” which could potentially hurt them Financially at present and in the future. “The bigger problem is that you can create almost a series of poverty,” said professor Gerontology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Marc Cohen.

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“This is not something that simply sticks to one generation. The costs are socially incurred.”

The Harvard Center for Housing Studies 2023 report confirmed that private long -term care, like helpful communities and healthcare, is beyond the reach of the average middle class citizen. Less than 15% of Americans 75 and older people living alone in the primary American cities could afford to pay for help in the field of help or healthcare without immersing in their savings. The federal government may not have much help, because Trump’s administration focuses on Medicare, a government medical insurance program for the elderly.

Medicare also doesn’t include most long -term healthcare.

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Will the southern accent repair disappear in some parts of the south of the USA?

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Growing up in Atlanta in the Forties and Fifties, Susan Levine’s visits to relatives in New York embraced the star of improvised news: her cousin invited friends and accused 25 cents for pop to be conscious of Levine’s southern accent.

Although furthermore they grew up in Atlanta, two sons Levine, born over 1 / 4 of a century after her, never talked to an accent, which could thoroughly be the most famous regional dialect in the United States, with elongated vowels and soft sounds “R”.

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“My accent does not exist,” said Ira Levine, her eldest son. “The people I work with and even at school, people did not believe that I was from Atlanta.”

The southern accent, which has many sorts, disappears in some areas of the South, when people migrate to the region from other parts of the USA and around the world. A series of research articles published in December documented a discount in a regional accent amongst black residents of the Atlanta area, white people from the working class in the region of New Orleans and other individuals who grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Has over 5.8 million people He moved to the south of the USA Until now, in the Nineteen Twenties, the sum of three other regions of the country is larger than 4 times. Linguists don’t imagine that mass media have played an infinite role in changing the language, which normally begins in urban areas and radiate to more rural places.

At the end of the twentieth century, the increase in migration affects the accents

The classic white southern accent in the Atlanta region and other parts of the urban south reached the peak of demographic growth born in 1946–1964 Gen Xers Born in 1965–1980 and subsequent generations, largely because of the huge migration of people in the second half of the twentieth century.

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He was replaced amongst the youngest speakers in the twenty first century of the dialect, which was first noticed in California in the late Eighties, in accordance with the last studies of the Linguists from the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech and Brigham Young University. This dialect, which was also detected in Canada, became a regional accent since it spread to other parts of the US, including Boston, New York and Michigan, contributing to reducing their regional accents.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, the trigger point in the fall of the southern accent was the opening in 1959 of the research park, an infinite complex of research and technology corporations that attracted tens of 1000’s of highly educated employees from outside the South. White residents born after 1979, the generation after establishing a research triangle, normally don’t confer with the southern accent, the linguist Sean Lundergan wrote in an article published in December.

Often, external people wrongly associate the southern accent with an absence of education, and some younger people can try to distance themselves from this stereotype.

“Today’s young people, especially educated young people, do not want to sound too much, as if they came from a specific city,” said Linguist Georgia Tech, Lelia Glass, who co-author of the study in Atlanta. “They want to sound more mobile, unlocal and geographically.”

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The accents change in younger people

Southern Dialect amongst blacks in Atlanta has fallen in recent an prolonged time mainly because of the influx of African Americans from northern cities, including “Reverse great migration.”

During great migration, from around 1910 to 1970, African Americans from the South moved to cities in the north like New York, Detroit and Chicago. Their grandchildren and great -grandchildren moved back south in large places to such places corresponding to Atlanta at the turn of the twentieth and early twenty first century and shall be more often educated in college.

Scientists found southern accents amongst African Americans who were dropped Gen Z.or people born in 1997–2012, in accordance with the study published in December. The same researchers had previously studied southern accents amongst white people in Atlanta.

Michelle and Richard Beck, General Xers living in the Atlanta region, have southern accents, but she lacks in their two sons born in 1998 and 2001.

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“I think they speak more clearly than me,” said Richard Beck about his sons, a law enforcement officer. “They don’t sound like a country like me when it comes to the southern draw.”

The “Yat” accent of the recent Orleans has decreased

Unlike other accents which have modified because of the influx of recent residents, the characteristic, white accent “YAT” of the working class in New Hurricane Katrina In 2005, the accent differs from other regional accents in the south and sometimes described as they sound like Brooklynes and southern.

Hurricane was a “catastrophic” event of a language change for New Orleans, because he resettled only a number of quarter of 1,000,000 inhabitants in the first 12 months after a storm and brought tens of 1000’s of people from outside in the next decade.

Reducing the “Yat” accent is most noticeable in millennia, who were teenagers when Katrina hit because they were exposed to other ways of speaking at a key moment of language development, said Katie Carmichael Virginia Tech, Katie Carmichael.

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Cheryl Wilson Lanier, a 64-year-old who grew up in Chalmette, Louisiana, one of the suburbs of New Orleans, where the accent was the most widespread, worries that part of the uniqueness of the region shall be lost if the accent disappears.

“It’s a bit like we are losing our separate personality,” she said.

Kerry Washington debuts in action as a mother ride on

Changing the southern identity

Although it decreases in many urban areas, the southern accent is unlikely to disappear completely, because “accents are an extremely simple way to show something to other people about ourselves,” said Linguist at the University of Georgia Margaret Renwick, one of the authors of research in Atlanta.

Instead, it’d reflect a change in how younger speakers perceive southern identity, with a regional accent not so closely related to what’s considered southern as in previous generations, and language boundaries less obligatory than other elements.

“So young people in the Atlanta or Raleigh area have a different vision of what life in the south is,” said Renwick. “And it’s not the same as the one with which their parents or grandparents grew up.”

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