Music Videos Reviews
Music Video Review: Bhekiwe – Powerful
The song’s stance is about what goes through the mind of a woman as she navigates the thick of the society, shedding light to the most common of insecurities and how all of these can be her source of strength.
Bhekiwe Powerful
As African women are still abused, marginalized and viewed to be inferior through ignorance, caging cultural expectations and generational stereo types. Bhekiwe a Pop/R&B artist drops the video for her song titled ‘Powerful’.
With a ” highly respected, power effective” display of the pop culture and Afrocentric themes that cement the artist’s inspirations and her native origin. The fashion sense, artwork, drums, set and contemporary dance moves executed in the video, enable her to cater for a larger audience and stand out amongst other artists who haven’t shown us this level of fusion between cultures. Bhekiwe also lyrically references the ancestral (Abaphansi) and the divine plane as her source of vigour and protection, showing that religion plays a major role in her abilities and also connecting to the masses that have similar understandings and beliefs.
The song’s stance is about what goes through the mind of a woman as she navigates through the thick of society, shedding light to the most common of insecurities and how all of these can be her source of strength. In her lyrics she makes references to her skin colour as her source of confidence and power which is an empowering statement to black women who go through criticism and judgement based on their skin tone. This topic alone crosses the boarders as it touches on societal views about women’s skin complexion regardless of geographical boundaries.
The major frames of the visuals are focused on the artist as she leads the dancers with a choreography style that displayed physical strength and lack of fear through big, expressive movements. She also demonstrates a potent attitude in her fierce facial expressions that really translate what the song is all about. Bhekiwe draws the attention of the audience in the video as most of the scenes and angles showcase her poise, beauty and fearlessness.
We would have liked to see Bhekiwe highlight the existence of other insecurities that affect Black African women such as beauty, weight, body shape, height and race. This video makes it seem like her only insecurity in her modelling and musical journey was her complexion which is relatable to a dent of the black women scope.
All that said, I do not think we have seen the nick of what Bhekiwe is capable of or what she’s yet to achieve, she shows so much improvement and creativity in every project . I’m sure she has more on the way that will cement her superstar status.
I give the video a 6/10 because there was thorough planning and critical thinking applied to the production to launch the music video and make it easy for the audience to understand the message. There’s a short film that translates and launches the music video for Powerful. You can watch it below.
If you have not seen this production I strongly suggest you to watch it so you have a feel of how far the music and film industry of The City Of Kings is headed.
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