Grammy performances put #blacklivesmatter centre stage

The stars of the Grammys took advantage of the event’s huge audience to pay tribute to the #blacklivesmatter movement that has swept the US following the shooting by police of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August and the killing by police of Eric Garner in Staten Island in July.

Beyoncé’s backing dancers performed the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture, an image that became a powerful symbol of the protest movements after grand juries in Ferguson and Staten Island both declined to indict Brown’s and Garner’s killers.

The ceremony had already taken a turn for the political after a presidential video highlighting domestic violence was shown to the audience, but it was Ferguson that provided the most powerful political imagery.

Presenting the award for Best Album, Prince said of albums that “like books, and black lives, they still matter,” while Pharrell Williams – who won Best Video and Best Solo Performance – paused his performance of Happy to perform the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture with his backing dancers.

And at the climax of the show, introduced by Beyoncé, rapper Common and John Legend performed their civil rights anthem Glory, which was commissioned as the theme song for the Martin Luther King Jr biopic Selma:

“That’s why Rosa sat on the bus / That’s why we walk through Ferguson with our hands up / When it go down we woman and man up / They say, ‘Stay down’ and we stand up / Shots, we on the ground, the camera panned up.”

Common, whose backing dancers also performed the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture, told the Daily Beast that events in Ferguson had inspired him as he wrote the song.

“I looked at Ferguson and saw what was going on, and knew that it wasn’t far from what was happening during the civil rights movement – people standing up for what they believe in, marching for what they believe in, protesting for what they believe in,” he said.

The Grammys themselves have come under fire in recent years for their perceived snubs of black artists.

“It’s one glaring example of how hip-hop artists – and black artists in particular – are still excluded from an upper echelon of the industry, right there in front of you,” said a comment piece in music magazine The Fader, which also pointed out that every nominee for Record of the Year and Song of the Year was white.