Remembering Congo’s Tropical Cowboys

Beyoncé’s latest album, Cowboy Carter, has inspired an international discussion about the underdiscussed Black history of cowboys. In Kinshasa, Congo, for instance, cowboys have a robust history dating as far back as the 1950s, when they contributed to Congolese anti-colonial movements. 

On 29 March 2024, American pop star, Beyoncé, released her eighth studio album, Cowboy Carter. The album is an appreciation of the American Western culture and how Black people played an important role in solidifying its identity. As with many of her productions, Beyoncé’s most recent project has inspired fans across the world, moving them to claim cowboy roots, which they’ve begun expressing through cultural statements as simple as their X (formerly Twitter) usernames by adding ‘cowboy’ as a prefix. One of those newfound cowboys is X user, Cowboy Malakai, whose appreciation for the project inspired her to create a thread about the history of African cowboys...

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