Women in Country Wednesday: "YA YA"
Cowboy Carter stomps, gallops, and storms her way through American history in the most innovative song I've heard in years.
Welcome to the first official Women in Country Wednesdays!
I first started this weekly segment on my Instagram Stories in 2022 when I was “studying” in Hawaii (I didn’t open a book the entire term).
Two whirlwind years later, I am no longer a beach bum in Hawaii. I am, in fact, in rural Czech Republic where there is no ocean and hardly anyone listens to American country music.
As I’ve spent a good chunk of my anti-burnout years far, far away from the continental United States, I can’t help but wonder about the grounding nature of country music. No matter where I am—god knows it’s not where I ever expected to be—country music seems to take me home…to the place, I belong?
But this week’s WCW song is anything but grounding. In fact, Miss Cowboy Carter shakes the very foundations of country as we know it.
“YA YA” by Beyonce is a tour-de-force celebration of Black music and history, all while galloping her way through American classics, from “These Boots Were Made from Walkin’” by Nancy Sinatra to “Good Vibrations” by The Beach Boys.
With explicit references to the “rodeo chitlin circuit”—segregated venues where Black artists including Ella Fitzgerald and Aretha Franklin would perform during the Jim Crow era—and lyrics like “Whole lotta red in that white and blue, huh / History can’t be erased,” “YA YA” underscores two critical points: Black history is American history and Black music is American music. Ipso facto, Black music is country music. Case in point: enslaved Africans and their descendants in North America invented the banjo, the most ubiquitous instrument associated with the genre.
Beyonce’s Black history lesson about the rodeo chitlin circuit, wage gaps, and redlining makes “YA YA” evocative and educational. But it’s the song’ production that shifts things into high gear and makes “YA YA” goddamn transcendent.
Beyonce maximizes her vocal range as she welcomes us to the second act homage to Nancy Sinatra’s feminist anthem “These Boots Were Made for Walkin’,” commands the circuit to start “jerkin’” and “twerkin’”, and emulate Elvis as she warns the audience, “If you ain’t got no grits, get the fuck up out the South” (an all-time favorite line).
Beyonce has the ethos, vocal range, and production to gallop through country and rock ‘n roll like a stallion romping through the Rockies (pun intended). “YA YA” takes turns being old and new, sweet and sultry, classic and creative. So what are you waiting for? From Texas to Gary to the Czech Republic, it’s time to bust it down.
Hats off, Cowboy Carter.
Listen here.