But in this case she deployed her band to a different purpose. She had previously performed with a marching band, albeit in a more militant fashion, during her controversial 2016 Super Bowl halftime show. What Beyoncé did onstage wasn’t entirely new, even for her. With her marching band, line dancers, and bright yellow aesthetic reminiscent of the colors of North Carolina A&T State University, from which some of the performers hailed, Queen Bey inserted herself into a long grand tradition of paying homage to the culture of historically black colleges and universities. She knew millions more would watch her history-making moment on their screens, and even if much of the Indio crowd wouldn’t pick up on everything she was doing, many of those at home would. Most of those faces did not appear to be black-which was perhaps not surprising given that this was a festival that had never previously featured a black woman as a headliner. When the festival’s cameras weren’t glued to the mesmerizing, 100-plus performers singing, playing, and dancing their hearts out onstage during Saturday night’s livestream of her historic headlining set, the cameras would occasionally cut to the elated, awestruck faces of the crowd. Beyoncé’s audience at Coachella may have been largely white, but her performance had “FUBU” written all over it.
