))
Practical Criticism No. 68—Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter
Manage episode 423607687 series 3561030
Content provided by Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.
Practical Criticism is back with its first episode of 2024—on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter. In it, Rebecca Ariel Porte plays the opening track of the album, “American Requiem,” for Ajay Singh Chaudhary, who, as usual, doesn’t know what the object will be. Their conversation then commences with a question: Beyoncé is far from the first to undertake the ambitious task of deconstructing country music’s many musical debts—but does she actually succeed in doing so? Along the way, they discuss the history of Black country music (and listen to Linda Martell), the convergence of aesthetic and commodity forms (is the album so slick as to slide over into parody?), conflictual aspirations to iconicity and iconoclasm, and the courage of conviction it takes to betray an older version of one’s own aesthetic commitments.
8 episodes
Share
