Not gonna keep you long. I just came by here to name and celebrate the unfamiliar luxuriousness of witnessing a dark-skinned, queer, Black woman be appreciated in very, very public.
I squint through awards shows, bracing, or I don’t watch them at all. I didn’t tune into the Grammys this year. Why? They play in the face of Black Excellence constantly. Jay Z wasn’t wrong in his nervous truth-telling. That no Black female artist has won Album of the Year since Lauryn Hill in the 1990s isn’t because no Black female artist has produced award-winning work.
I don’t know if y’all watch the Peanuts cartoons, but I feel like Charlie Brown watching these shows. “Just watch, Sharifa! We won’t pull any misogynoir antics this year, promise!” And then…
The Grammys is Lucy.
Beyoncé gets snubbed. SZA gets snubbed. Taylor Swift gets simultaneously deified and infantilized. Didn’t I just watch The Color Purple get ignored in almost every category last month while folks whined about Barbie? Didn’t I just see Angela Bassett get an “honorary” Academy Award, when she SHOULD HAVE WON FOR WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT 30 YEARS AGO and Wakanda Forever last year? I can’t do this.
But the Grammys tripped into a sacred moment on Sunday (actually, to be fair, there were many happy accident great performances) and from what I have seen, we are all still basking in the glow. Luke Combs, of whom I have never heard, got on stage with Tracy Chapman and honored her in every way possible. He stared at her with revelry. The performance centered her: her guitar-playing, her opening the song, her receiving raucous applause with the first guitar lick and first verse. Her receiving a deserved standing ovation. He revered the artist who conceived the song he remade, unabashedly—even going so far as to bow appreciatively to her after their performance ended. He also earned her half a mil in royalties. (Click on the image below to watch the entire performance)
And she beamed like joy without pretense. And we beamed with her.
American music is a field with a sordid history of white artists stealing work, stealing credit, and stealing profit from Black performers. But this moment was right. It was repair.
Tracy Chapman’s artistry and her presentation has always been spare and true. So many of us didn’t know what to do with her truth in the 80s and 90s because she didn’t perform typical Black girl. Stacy Dash was the ideal, how could there be room for a dark woman with no makeup, baby locs crowning her head? As far as I can recall (and granted, my memory is wanting), she wasn’t playing on KISS FM or WBLS. She was creating her own category with an expansive, self-accepting vision of Black womanness that many of us didn’t catch for years.
I am elated and soothed by the flowers Tracy Chapman received this week. This is the kind of carrying on I love during Black History Month.
I wanted to give thanks for the unwitting co-conspirators who influenced my writing this week:
Have watched the clip so many times, and I love it a little more each time. This time, I noticed her big, beautiful dimples as she smiled the whole time. What a blessing to all of us that this moment happened, but I hope it blessed her at least as much.
I avoid award shows for the same reasons. Your (not as brief as you led me to believe it would be in the introduction) reflection helped me to remember that there are always little glimmers of hope ready to be seen and shared. Thanks for sharing this with us this morning.