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In Oklahoma, a small country music station that initially refused a listener\u2019s request to play a new song by Beyonc\u00e9 was forced to change its tune after an uproar from fans who say that Black artists are too often excluded from the genre.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday morning, Justin McGowan requested that the D.J.s at KYKC, a country music radio station in Ada, play \u201cTexas Hold \u2019Em,\u201d<\/a> one of two new songs Beyonc\u00e9 released as announced in a Super Bowl commercial<\/a> on Sunday.<\/p>\n Beyonc\u00e9, who grew up in Houston, sings about hoedowns, and the twangy song also features a fellow Black Grammy winner, Rhiannon Giddens<\/a>, on banjo and viola.<\/p>\n The station manager, Roger Harris, emailed Mr. McGowan back with a concise rejection: \u201cWe do not play Beyonc\u00e9 at KYKC as we are a country music station.\u201d In sending the email, Mr. Harris unwittingly ignited a new flame in a long-simmering debate over how Black artists fit into a genre that has Black music at its roots.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the Super Bowl ad, Beyonc\u00e9 joked that her new release would \u201cbreak the internet.\u201d She wasn\u2019t kidding.<\/p>\n Mr. McGowan put a screenshot of the rejection on social media, tagging a Beyonc\u00e9 fan group in a post that drew 3.4 million views<\/a> on X and sparked conversations on Reddit and TikTok.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is absolutely ridiculous and racist,\u201d Mr. McGowan wrote, urging people to email the station and request the song.<\/p>\n Fans bombarded KYKC with hundreds of emails and phone calls, criticizing the station for not playing the song, according to Mr. Harris, the station manager for 48 years.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never experienced anything in my career like the amount of communications that we received in support of the song,\u201d he said in an interview.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In between fielding calls and emails from angry Beyonc\u00e9 fans, Mr. Harris said the station scrambled to procure a high-quality version of \u201cTexas Hold \u2019Em,\u201d which D.J.s played three times in Tuesday night\u2019s rotation.<\/p>\n Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s new songs appear on an upcoming album that she referred to as \u201cAct II,\u201d part of a three-volume project that music critics have said is about reclaiming Black roots in popular music.<\/p>\n Mr. Harris said that he was not aware of that project. He said the radio network, which is owned by the Chickasaw Nation, regularly plays Beyonc\u00e9 on its Top 40 and adult hit stations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe haven\u2019t played her on our country station because she\u2019s not a country artist,\u201d he said. \u201cWell, now I guess she wants to be, and we\u2019re all for it.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Harris said that their rotation is guided by where a song appears on the charts, and by what bigger stations play.<\/p>\n This was not the first time Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s country music credentials have been called into question by arbiters of the genre.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n When the star submitted her 2016 song \u201cDaddy Lessons\u201d from the album \u201cLemonade\u201d for a Grammy in the country category, the Recording Academy\u2019s country music committee rejected it, The Associated Press reported at the time<\/a>. (Beyonc\u00e9 brought rodeo chic to the Renaissance World Tour and to this year\u2019s Grammys, wearing a white cowgirl hat and a leather Louis Vuitton suit.) Some fans responded to her live performance of \u201cDaddy Lessons\u201d with the Chicks at the Country Music Awards with scorn<\/a>, arguing that she did not belong at the ceremony.<\/p>\n The removal in 2019 by Billboard of the hip-hop artist Lil Nas X\u2019s \u201cOld Town Road\u201d<\/a> from the country chart generated a debate over what constitutes country music, and over how race affects the conversation.<\/p>\n The Black Opry \u2014 a social media hub for Black artists and Black fans of country, blues, folk and Americana \u2014 used the radio station controversy involving Beyonc\u00e9 to direct her fans online to its playlists on Spotify featuring other Black artists in country music<\/a>.<\/p>\n Charles Hughes, the director of the Lynne and Henry Turley Memphis Center at Rhodes College, said that the Oklahoma radio station\u2019s initial dismissal of Beyonc\u00e9 symbolized how \u201ccountry radio has systematically excluded artists of color,\u201d particularly women.<\/p>\n But if anyone can break down the barriers in country, Dr. Hughes said, it\u2019s Beyonc\u00e9 and her fans, known as the BeyHive.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe that power will create an expanded space for all these great Black women making country music,\u201d he said, \u201cto make it more in line with the people who love country music and the country it\u2019s supposed to represent.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n