And so "Don't Touch My Hair" is really a moment to do that. Allow us to have that moment, just like the album, to really take pride and celebrate our journey and look at where we came from and look at where we are today. KNOWLES: Her saying, allow us to be pro-black. And that if you do, then it's considered anti-white. And it really saddens me when we're not allowed to express that pride in being black. TINA KNOWLES: It's such beauty in black people. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "INTERLUDE: TINA TAUGHT ME") And I think that she articulates what I'm trying to say in a totally different way.
And I think my mother's interlude that happens before that song is so powerful.
It encompasses a broader message for just black empowerment. It becomes social.Īnd I think that, you know, the hair part of the song is not just about hair, obviously. And your hair can send so many different messages to so many different people in the world, that it becomes political. The hair journey of a black woman is so specific. Don't touch my soul, when it's the rhythm I know.īlack hair has such a significance in black culture. KNOWLES: (Singing) Don't touch my hair, when it's the feelings I wear. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DON'T TOUCH MY HAIR") Talk about the significance of this song. The cover art for this album, your hair is like this ornamented halo. I guess you kind of grew up almost in a hair salon. SHAPIRO: Because your mother was a hairstylist. SHAPIRO: Can we talk about "Don't Touch My Hair"? But I also had a lot of personal healing to do. I mean, I wanted to honor my family by creating work that I felt that we could all heal from and have the conversations.
SHAPIRO: And so did you find by writing this that there was some kind of, I don't know, catharsis or healing or closure? Or was that even what you were looking for? KNOWLES: (Singing) Walk in your ways, so you will wake up and rise. I honestly feel like when I hear that song, I can feel my roots. Because it's almost like a meditation to just prepare yourself to go through this journey. That was really about honoring my lineage, my past. Fall in your ways, so you can wake up and rise. Fall in your ways, so you can sleep night. When I say fall in ways, so you can crumble. Fall in your ways, so you can sleep at night. KNOWLES: (Singing) Fall in your ways, so you can crumble. One of the important reasons that I wanted to write the lyrics specifically there is because I wanted to reclaim that space, basically say no one's pushing me out of town. And it became a little bit of a race war. So there were a lot of people embarrassed by the situation. And my mother's cousins went and saved him. And they basically just kind of left him for dead. And there was a big explosion that happened.
KNOWLES: My grandfather was actually a miner.
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And there was a series of really, really awful events to where essentially in the middle of the night they got pushed out of town. KNOWLES: New Iberia is where my maternal grandparents are from. And she wrote most of the song lyrics in a small town where her family has roots, called New Iberia, La. The album includes interviews she did with her parents. SHAPIRO: This is also her most personal work yet. SOLANGE KNOWLES: (Singing) You got the light, count it all joy. The songs on this album celebrate black culture, confront prejudice and explore the trauma of witnessing black people killed. Like her sister Beyonce's recent work, Solange is exploring what it means to be black in America today. It hit number one on the Billboard charts last month. The newest album from Solange Knowles is her most political and most commercially successful yet.