(Shawn Miller / Library of Congress)

Before achieving massive success with songs like "About Damn Time," Lizzo was known as an up-and-coming pop star and a talented flutist. In fact, one could argue she broke through to mainstream audiences because she used to simultaneously twerk and play the flute.

Her flute has been largely absent from her pop career of late as she racks up more traditional pop hits, but recently, she was given a chance to play a priceless artifact — a crystal flute gifted to the fourth American President James Madison by Parisian craftsman Claude Laurent in 1813.

This was, to some, a very huge deal. The viral video of her performance has since racked up millions of views around the web.

Lizzo playing two notes on Madison's flute at a recent concert in Washington, D.C. riled up a certain segment of Twitter, as some scandalization-prone conservatives were aghast that Lizzo tooted and twerked with James Madison's flute, such as Ben Shapiro.

Some left-leaning posters interpreted Lizzo playing Madison's flute playing as a political statement since Madison was a slave-owner and the author of the infamous Three-Fifths Compromise, which enshrined in the Constitution the idea that 60 percent of a state's slave population would count towards its population and representation in the United States government.

This seems to have contributed to some of the conservative backlash, as Daily Wire columnist Matt Walsh tweeted hyperbolic claims of "racial retribution" and "degradation."

The truth is likely less complicated or politically motivated than those on either side would believe. On September 23rd, Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, publicly invited Lizzo to check out the government's stash of cool flutes ahead of her D.C. gig.

Lizzo came and a video was made by the Washington Post of Lizzo playing some old pieces on some old flutes.


If Lizzo intended her performance with Madison's flute to be some sort of statement of "racial retribution," she didn't show it on stage. Instead, she regaled the audience with a little of the history behind the flute and excitedly exclaimed that she'd twerked and played it.

The "controversy" behind the would-be "Flutegate" proved exhausting to many onlookers, who weren't interested in another round of outrage from what they perceived as much of the same people angry that the new Little Mermaid is Black.


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Comments 4 total

Nebula96

Nobody even knew the damn thing existed before Lizzo played it

0

King Crimson

Did anyone really give a fuck about James Madison's flute OR James Madison before this? Because I'm prepared to call you a liar.

1

Mace121

Okay, reading the title is already absurd. Do I need to remind you Twitter is a shithole?

7
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