Belgium has been in shock since finding out Queen B hails from the lowlands.
It is the RTBF (Belgian Radio of the French Community) that revealed this Friday that Beyoncé is of Belgian origin.
In an Instagram post, the French-language public channel explains that historian Marie Cappart recently traced the Crazy In Love singer’s family tree and discovered that she had an ancestor named Albert Decuir who lived in Macon, near the French border.
This decuir would have left Belgium for Louisiana in 1720 and fathered the queen of popular music seven generations later.
But like them RTBF announces it on its websiteit seems that Decuir has surviving descendants in Belgium.
This is particularly true of Willy Decuir, 73, former mayor (that’s what mayors are called in Belgium) of Froidchapelle, a town of 4,000 people.
Speaking to Belgian state television, the retired politician said he was surprised but happy to learn he was “from the same family” as Beyoncé, even though he didn’t know her songs.
“It’s really weird. How can you imagine for a quarter of a second, living here in the province of Hainaut, that you have an eighth generation cousin, something like that, making such a career in America? It’s not something you tell yourself when you get up in the morning,” he told RTBF.
By a happy coincidence, the Single Ladies singer will travel through the land of Jacques Brel and Gaston Lagaffe for a concert at the King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels on May 14th.