As the stage dims and the energy momentarily shifts, a scratchy, historic recording of “Looky, Looky Yonder” cuts through the room. It’s not a remix. Not a cover. Not Beyoncé’s voice. Instead, it’s Lead Belly’s—raw, rhythmic, and real—playing over the speakers as part of a carefully curated interlude. It’s a deliberate act of remembrance, placing a century-old field recording from a Southern prison camp in front of tens of thousands of modern fans.

Born Huddie William Ledbetter, Lead Belly was a 20th-century Black folk and blues musician whose legacy is inseparable from America’s musical foundation. His mastery of the 12-string guitar, deeply felt vocal grit, and extensive songbook made him one of the most influential artists in American history—though too often, his influence has gone uncredited or underappreciated.

“Looky, Looky Yonder,” one of his lesser-known but thematically rich recordings, is a prison work song—part of a medley he often performed alongside “Black Betty” and “Yellow Women’s Door Bells.” These were songs of survival and labor, sung in chain gangs and fields under brutal conditions. They held rhythm not just for melody, but for pace—marching time, hammer swings, the choreography of the incarcerated.

In Beyoncé’s hands—or more accurately, in her intentional curation—this medley becomes a moment of meditation. She doesn’t sing it. She doesn’t reinterpret it. She simply lets it play. The effect is chilling. It’s not nostalgia—it’s confrontation. A reminder that before there was “Cowboy Carter,” there were Black artists laying the foundation for what American music would become, often in places where their songs were the only form of freedom they had.

“She doesn’t sing it. She doesn’t cover it. She lets it speak for itself.”
— House Notes, the Lead Belly Estate Blog

By incorporating this field recording into the tour, Beyoncé links her contemporary country album to the origin stories so often left out of the genre’s mainstream narrative. Country didn’t begin with rhinestone cowboys—it began on front porches, in juke joints, and behind prison gates. It was shaped by Black hands and Black pain, something Beyoncé makes clear without needing to say a word.

And yet, that’s what makes it genius. Her interlude featuring Lead Belly is a lesson in restraint and reverence. It invites the audience to hear something they might otherwise skip. It teaches by feeling. And for many in the crowd, it may be their first time hearing Huddie Ledbetter’s voice. That alone is history at work.

As the tour continues, Cowboy Carter is proving to be more than an album—it’s an archive, a reclamation, and a declaration. And for the Lead Belly estate, it’s also a long-overdue moment of acknowledgment.

Because sometimes the most powerful tribute isn’t found in a tribute album—it’s found in a brief pause, in a moment of sound, when someone listens on purpose.