Why does Kamala Harris use the song ‘Freedom’ by Beyonce at the DNC?
Kamala Harris has chosen as the anthem for her 2024 White House run Beyoncé's ‘Freedom’ which according to an expert on campaign songs is a “good fit.”
Vice President Kamala Harris was passed the baton by President Joe Biden at the last minute to finish the 2024 race for the White House. Just a couple days later, during her first official visit to her campaign headquarters as she entered Beyoncé's song ‘Freedom’ played.
The Harris campaign, just hours before that appearance, received approval from the artist without hesitation to use her song from the 2016 album ‘Lemonade’. Since then, it has been her campaign’s anthem, featuring in ads, at rallies and the two times she took the stage at the Democratic National Convention.
Why does Kamala Harris use the song ‘Freedom’ by Beyonce at the DNC?
Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, an associate professor of music at Georgia College, observed in an interview with Vox that the backbone of the rally soundtrack for the Harris campaign is made up of Black female artists. Featuring the likes of Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston and Megan Thee Stallion, to name a few, which “elevates a matrilineal paradigm of Black excellence that spans 60 years.”
Gorzelany-Mostak, who authored ‘Tracks on the Trail: Popular Music, Race, and the US Presidency’, points out that that is in stark contrast to classic-rock-dominated RNC. She ventures that through the music she is using, Harris is trying to disrupt the narrative that Trump is trying to create “by leaning into the very identity that he critiques.” Trump has questioned Harris’s leadership credentials as well as her racial identity by saying that she has only recently identified as Black, something that is blatantly and refutably false.
‘Freedom’ is a divergence from much of the rest of her campaign playlist which is composed of more light-hearted and fun dance music. The music professor says that while Beyoncé's more austere tune conveys “a certain level of urgency,” on the whole when taken with the rest of the soundtrack, it “reminds voters that they can acknowledge the country’s painful history, commit to the serious work that needs to be done, but still sing, laugh, and dance along with her on the path to victory.”
‘Freedom’ by Beyonce is a “good fit for Harris”
The song is a “good fit for Harris” in the opinion of Gorzelany-Mostak as “it brings together a lot of narratives that align with her campaign message and the presidential brand she is trying to cultivate.”
“‘Freedom’ adopts an almost prayerful tone in its adoption of gospel signifiers and its textual reference to the spiritual ‘Wade in the Water’,” she explains. She goes on to illustrate that “in the spiritual, water represents the possibility for escape in times of enslavement.”
Furthermore, in ‘Freedom’ water is also represented in the form of “rain” and “tears” by alluding to the impact of mass incarceration and the cultural trauma caused by Hurricane Katrina in Black communities, as well as her own personal turmoil.
“In choosing ‘Freedom’, Harris is situating herself and the 2024 election in the lineage and the sound world of these transhistorical struggles, both personal and political,” Gorzelany-Mostak concludes.