+
Pop Culture

Lizzo plays James Madison's 209-year-old crystal flute on stage in a historically symbolic moment

Lizzo continues to break barriers without apology.

lizzo concert

Lizzo made history playing James Madison's crystal flute at her Washington, D.C., concert.

Imagine James Madison sitting in the White House during his second term as president. An enslaved Black servant delivers the president his dinner, which he eats by oil lamp as electricity wouldn't be installed until 19 presidents later. The War of 1812 rages. Most newspapers are still weekly, so news spreads slowly. There is no such thing as the internet, television or even radio.

Now imagine someone plops a laptop onto President Madison's desk and presses a button. On the screen—which is like nothing he has ever seen before—he watches a Black woman perform on a stage in front of thousands of people. Lights—which he's never seen—illuminate and reflect off her sequined bodysuit. She steps up to a microphone—which he's also never seen—and speaks to the 20,000 people in the audience.

Then she lifts up something Madison has seen and instantly recognizes—a crystal flute specially made for him for his second inauguration. The woman lifts the flute to her lips and plays. Madison is told this is happening approximately a mile away from where he sits, more than 200 years into the future.

Imagine him trying to process any single part of what he's witnessing.


On September 27, 2022, pop star Lizzo played President Madison's crystal flute during her concert at Capitol One arena in Washington, D.C. It was a moment filled with historic symbolism—a Black woman wielding the instrument of the president who proposed the three-fifths compromise, who was served by enslaved Black people in the White House 50 years before the Emancipation Proclamation and who was elected to that office more than 100 years before women gained the right to vote.

Like some other powerful men of his time, Madison claimed to oppose slavery on paper but nonetheless engaged in it himself. He owned and sold enslaved Black people throughout his lifetime, before, during and after his presidency, despite saying that the slave trade was "dishonorable to the National character" and referring to slavery as "evil."

It's hard to imagine how he'd truly feel about Lizzo playing his flute before a virtual audience of millions, but there's no doubt it would utterly blow Madison's mind to see this:

In the big picture of history, those time periods are tiny. Fifty years isn't even one average person's lifetime. One hundred years is just a few generations, who could all be living at the same time. Two hundred years just isn't that long ago, and look at how much has changed since then.

Here's how it happened: Carla Hayden, the first woman and the first Black person to serve as Librarian of Congress, invited Lizzo to come check out the Library of Congress' collection of more than 1,800 flutes just a few days before the concert. Lizzo enthusiastically took her up on the invitation.

Handlers brought the flute out on stage for Lizzo during her concert, and she gingerly took it and played a few notes before handing it back.

Lizzo shared two videos of the experience on Instagram, writing, "IM THE FIRST & ONLY PERSON TO PLAY THIS PRESIDENTIAL CRYSTAL FLUTE ITS LITERALLY AN HEIRLOOM— LIKE… AS A FLUTE PLAYER THIS IS ICONIC AND I WILL NEVER BE OVER IT🎶"

Lizzo continues to break barriers without apology and to show the world what gumption in action looks like.

Progress may come in fits and starts, and it may take enormous effort and it may meet fierce resistance, but look at where we are compared to where we were.

Yes, history is "freaking cool" indeed.

Our home, from space.

Sixty-one years ago, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to make it into space and probably the first to experience what scientists now call the "overview effect." This change occurs when people see the world from far above and notice that it’s a place where “borders are invisible, where racial, religious and economic strife are nowhere to be seen.”

The overview effect makes man’s squabbles with one another seem incredibly petty and presents the planet as it truly is, one interconnected organism.

Keep ReadingShow less
@katherout/TikTok

Just another unsolved mystery

Who doesn’t like a good mystery?

A video creator known as @katherout certainly does. At the gym Kath frequents, there’s a whiteboard with a revolving prompt with simple questions like “What are you listening to?” or “What city were you born in?” Gym goers then write their responses anonymously on the board.

Kath recently became enthralled—and tickled—by a person who somehow manage to write the word “monke” (as in the word describing a group of monkeys, apparently) on every single one of their answers.

Keep ReadingShow less
@allbelongco/TikTok

How bizarre, how bizarre.

It should go without saying that it’s not cool to steal from your Airbnb. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still happen.

However, when one Airbnb host recently discovered a guest had—for some strange reason—stolen one of her paintings, then replaced it with a completely different painting, she decided to make the best out of a very uncool situation by sharing the story on TikTok.

As a result, viewers got to witness an continuously unraveling, truly bizarre modern-day art heist.

Okay, let’s get into it.

Keep ReadingShow less

11-year-old girl is the youngest opera singer in the world.

The majority of 11-year-olds are perfectly content balancing the pre-teen life with Barbie dolls and tinted lipgloss. But one pre-teen is busy breaking records. Victory Brinker is an 11-year-old opera prodigy who was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's youngest opera singer in 2019 when she was almost 8 years old.

If you like opera—or even if you don't—hearing her vocal range of three octaves and voice control is impressive. When it comes to singing, control of your breath, pitch and tone can be difficult, especially when you're without years of classical training. Victory's skill is so impressive that when she appeared on America's Got Talent last year, she was given the "golden buzzer," which sends you straight to the finalist round in Hollywood.

Keep ReadingShow less

Brianna Greenfield makes nachos for her husband.

A viral video showing a woman preparing nachos for her "picky" spouse after he refused to eat the salmon dinner she cooked has sparked a contentious debate on TikTok. The video was shared on April 26 by Brianna Greenfield (@themamabrianna on TikTok) and has since earned over 2.5 million views.

Brianna is a mother of two who lives in Iowa.

The video starts with Brianna grating a massive hunk of cheese with a caption that reads: “My husband didn’t eat the dinner that I made…So let’s make him some nachos.”

“If I don’t feed him, he literally won’t eat,” she wrote. “This used to irritate me. Now I just blame his mother for never making him try salmon,” Greenfield wrote. The video features Meghan Trainor’s single “Mother” playing in the background.

Keep ReadingShow less
@miztermiller/TikTok

Now THAT'S a deal.

Let's be real—buying secondhand allows us to save a few bucks, which is great. But the real thrill is the possibility of snagging that ultra-rare, one-of-a-kind item that’s worth a bajillion times more than we originally paid for it. Yes, that kind of shopping is a lottery unto itself. But man, what a jackpot, should you win.

And of course, it’s not a totally far-fetched fantasy. Costly things get thrown out or donated all the time, ready to be procured at the nearby thrift store, garage sale…

…or, in this case, Facebook Marketplace.

Keep ReadingShow less