On April 14 and 21, American R&B singer Beyonce Knowles headlined the 2018 Coachella Festival performance located in Indio, California. Her performance, themed “Homecoming,” shed light on the historical black college experience.
The 2018 Coachella performance, raved about for months, was just beginning to die down until April 2019. On April 17, 2019, Netflix released the two hour and seventeen minute production performance movie, Beyonce Homecoming.
Not only did the Netflix film include the 2018 Coachella performance by Beyonce, but it also included her preparation process of the eight months leading up to the performance. According to the Netflix distributors, the film is an “intimate, in-depth look” of the concert that reveals “the emotional road from creative concept to a cultural movement.”
Beyhive members first learned about the Homecoming Netflix project April 3, 2019. Three days later Netflix dropped a tease of the the film on social media along with the official release date. Within just 24 hours after the trailer actually dropped, 16.6 million viewers streamed upon the film’s release. The album released along with the Netflix film titled Homecoming: The Live Album, featuring the songs she performed at Coachella.
At the 2018 Coachella performance, Beyonce Knowles-Carter was the first African American to headline the event. Dozens of African-American dancers, drummers, and marching band members backed her up to display the legacy of historical black colleges.
Personally I am a fan of Beyonce, not a die-hard fan, but I appreciate the legacy she has created and the movement she’s started. To be the first African-American woman to headline Coachella and to be able to shed light on a huge part of the African-American community speaks volumes. Beyonce brought African-American culture, which is rarely seen at Coachella.
The two-hour film inspired me. After having twins, Beyonce dedicated her months up to the Coachella performance to healthy eating, day-in and day-out rehearsals, and a strict schedule that corresponded to her performance. In her Homecoming film Beyonce displays the strength and the heritage behind African Americans. I rate the film a ten out of ten.
