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Black Is King & The Fear Of African Spir ituality
BY YORUBA MERMAID
Beyoncé’s visual album, ‘Black Is King’ was released to unsurprising fanfare. We all knew what we were going to get from Beyoncé and that is, excellence. No one can deny Beyoncé’s dedication to her craft. Her desire and commitment to hold herself to
a higher standard than most are well known. Amidst the praise for the celebration of blackness in the ‘Black Is King’ film, criticism of a different kind started to crop up. It has nothing to do with the
quality of the film or the music. Instead, there were concerns that Beyoncé was promoting demonic energy in her album.
This conversation was spearheaded by a blogger named thedelphinator on Instagram. In
a matter of hours, her post had traveled around the digital ether. While thedelphinator is seen as the genesis of this argument, she certainly is not the only
one who has less than positive feelings about Beyoncé’s new visual album or the recent path
her artistry has taken as of late. But what is it that has so many people upset? She pointed
out a particular line in one of Beyoncé’s new songs, ‘Black Parade’; of life of fertile ground, ancestors put me on game. Ankh charm on gold chains, with my Osun energy, oh. Many people also took issue with the title of the film, stating that Beyoncé intends to create gods among men.
This type of thinking is limiting and wrong on so many levels. African spirituality has been demonized for a very long time. Language is a very powerful and influential part of our humanity and we as people must err on the side of caution and resist demonizing that which we do not understand. A prime example
of this is the mistranslation of Esu, a Yoruba deity, by Samuel Ajayi Crowther as ‘the devil’. In reality, there is no such
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