Beyoncé says her father suffered "a lot of trauma" as a child. The Pretty Hurts hitmaker, who previously hinted that she has had a difficult relationship with Matthew Knowles since he stopped managing her career in 2011, admits he was one of the people who inspired her performance of Take My Hand, Precious Lord at the Grammy Awards recently because he was racially abused during his school days.

In a new behind-the-scenes video about her performance, she said: "The first time I heard Precious Lord, I was a kid and my mother sang it to me. She sang the song with her eyes closed and she was a vessel. It was like God speaking, using her body to speak and to heal. My grandparents marched with [civil rights campaigner] Dr [Martin Luther] King and my father was among the first generation that attended an all-white school. My father has grown up with a lot of trauma from those experiences. I feel like now I can sing for his pain. Now I can sing for my grandparents' pain."

Matthew, 63, and Beyoncé parted ways professionally in 2010 shortly after he split from her mother, Tina Knowles, because he fathered a son, Nixon, with Alexsandra Wright.

The 33-year-old singer hinted in early 2013 that they were still in the process of rebuilding their relationship, but she and her sister, Solange Knowles, failed to attend his wedding to Gena Charmaine Avery in June of that year, and Matthew was recently rumoured to be selling souvenirs from her career in his garden.

Beyoncé also performed at the Grammys with an all-male choir as she wanted to "show the strength and the vulnerability in black men" after the controversial deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner by white police officers in the United States.

She said: "I wanted to find real men that have lived, have struggled, cried, have a life and a spirit about them."