14 DAY TRIAL // Beyonce closed the Grammy Awards 2015 on Sunday night with a moving and beautiful performance of “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” as part of a tribute for the Oscar-nominated film “Selma” and the night’s unofficial theme that #BlackLivesMatter.
That was prompted by the wave of violence against blacks across the US and particularly the more recent instances of discrimination against them within police forces.
Earlier in the evening, Pharrell Williams and Prince did the same, with the former including the “Hands up, don’t shoot” gesture in his choreography for “Happy,” while the latter simply took the microphone and said that “like books and black lives, albums still matter.”
Beyonce was joined by an all-male choir made up only of African Americans, who, she explains in her latest YouTube video, were “real men that have lived, have struggled, cried, and have a light and a spirit about them.”
In other words, they were chosen for the stories they could tell, because that was the only way in which the message of the song had the most weight. Beyonce too related to the song and the moment she was creating because her parents had marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, and her father had been among the first generation of blacks to attend all-white schools.
If you enjoyed Queen Bey’s performance and thought it was the closest thing to perfection you could see, brace yourself, because this video will make it so much better for you.
