搬运译Pitchfork评10年代最佳单曲第4名：Beyoncé: “Formation” (2016)

搬运自：微信公众号【评论搬一堆】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）

原文链接：https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-songs-of-the-2010s/

翻译：Tyler Smith/ June Hess

审译：Ryan-Chopin

推送：Lynn Liu

The day after Trayvon Martin’s birthday, Beyoncé unceremoniously uploaded “Formation” onto her website. The tension of the song was immediate from the siren of Mike WiLL’s hypnotic two-note opening: It felt viscerally reactive to the moment, a response to the murder of black people at the hands of the police, a reminder—via the opening voice of Messy Mya from beyond the grave—that the cyclical nature of violence is heightened among communities forgotten by the government. It reminded me of the story behind Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddamn,” a furious song Simone wrote in 1964 as an antidote to internal anger, delivered with the pep of a show tune, that reflected on the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers and a white-supremacist attack on an Alabama church that killed four young girls. Simone once said, “We will shape and mold this country or it will not be molded and shaped at all anymore.” When Beyoncé performed “Formation” at the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show, the day after its release, wearing the bandoliers of the Black Panthers, it felt like she was ready to take the reins and be seen doing so.

In the unforgettable video, Beyoncé crouches on a cop car submerged alongside houses in New Orleans devastated by natural disaster, the scene interspersed with images of people dancing in the dark—it’s the no-fucks vibrancy of a culture that persists when the systems surrounding them have been sucked into the muck and left to languish. Beyoncé celebrates the Southern black vernacular and Southern black culture: marching bands, cowboys, step squads, Mardi Gras, and bounce queens appear in the video, and in the song, she flaunts her “baby hair and afros” and her “negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils.”

在Trayvon Martin生日的第二天，Beyoncé毫不客气地将《Formation》上传到她的网站上。这首歌的紧张气氛直接来自于Mike WiLL催眠般的两个音符开头的警笛声：它对那一刻发自内心的反应，对警察谋杀黑人事件的反应。来自坟墓之外的混乱的Mya的开场声音是一个提醒，在被政府遗忘的社区中，周期性的暴力在本质上被强化了。这让我想起了Nina Simone的《Mississippi Goddamn》背后的故事，Simone在1964年写了一首充满愤怒的歌曲，作为消除内心愤怒的解药，这首歌充满活力，反映了民权活动人士Medgar Evers被谋杀，以及白人至上主义者袭击阿拉巴马州一座教堂、导致四名年轻女孩死亡的事件。Simone曾经说过:“我们将塑造构建这个国家，否则它将不再改变。”Beyoncé在2016年超级碗(Super Bowl)中场秀上表演《Formation》，也就是专辑发行的第二天，她穿着黑豹党的绑腿裤，感觉她已经准备好接过接力棒了。

在这段令人难忘的视频中，Beyoncé蹲在一辆警车上，旁边是被自然灾害摧毁的新奥尔良房屋，场景中穿插着人们在黑暗中跳舞的画面，这是一种文化的活力，当他们周围的事物已经深陷泥潭，任其自生自灭时，这种活力依然存在。Beyoncé赞美南方黑人的方言和文化，视频中有游行乐队、牛仔、步兵营、狂欢节和弹跳皇后，在歌曲中，她炫耀她的“婴儿头发和非洲式发型”和“杰克逊五个鼻孔大的黑人鼻子”。

Though the song was thoroughly and specifically for and about black women and their unseen labor, the whole world was quick to rally behind another Bey hit. Hillary Clinton, hot on the campaign trail, would mention she had hot sauce in her bag on an interview with long-running hip-hop radio show, “The Breakfast Club,” Etsy would commodify her language and iconography, so that women of every race could get in formation. The next year, “Formation” would lose two Grammys to Adele’s “Hello,” but the phrase “OK ladies, now let’s get in formation” would appear across signs at the Women’s March and in allyship alongside the #MeToo movement, reinvigorated from a decade’s existence by the Weinstein allegations. The song’s initial appeal was an awakening for a country in crisis. But it will live on as a reminder of the slow, persistent, daily work of organizing and the power of resilience and protest—the importance of holding grief, anger, hope, and pride side by side. –Puja Patel

尽管这首歌是专门为黑人女性及其看不见的劳动而创作的，但全世界都迅速团结起来支持Beyoncé的这又一热门歌曲。Hillary Clinton在进行竞选活动接受长期播放的嘻哈广播节目《he Breakfast Club》的采访时，提到自己的包里有辣椒酱。Etsy将她的语言和肖像商品化，这样每个种族的女性都能参与进来。第二年，《Formation》输给Adele的《Hello》，失去两项格莱美奖，但“OK ladies, now let’s get in Formation”这句话出现在妇女游行的各种标志上，并与“MeToo”运动并肩作战。这首歌最初的诉求是唤醒一个处于危机中的国家，但它将继续提醒人们，组织工作缓慢、持久并且日常，以及作为抵御和抗议的力量而存在，把悲伤、愤怒、希望和骄傲并肩，这些都最重要。