Billie Holiday Research Articles

Jazz music: From black pride to political consciousness to social change in the United States

African Americans have been marginalised, discriminated against, and excluded from American society for centuries. First as slaves, but later when they gained emancipation, they remained relegated, differentiated, and discounted, in a range of areas, including in the political and economic spheres. Music has been a means to promote their greater inclusion in American society, drawing together and uniting all Americans through its power. While there have been links drawn between music and the African American struggle for equality, there has not been sufficient focus on the pivotal role that specifically jazz music has played in this regard. Jazz particularly has been a vehicle for promoting Black pride, political consciousness, and social change. This article argues that jazz has had a major effect on African American culture, society, and experience. Analysing the works of legendary jazz musicians James Brown, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, and The Temptations, this article shows that jazz is not only as a catalyst for, but a driving force in, the fight for political freedom, as well as for economic empowerment, which is arguably still ongoing today.

Shamelessly Blue: Pitch Complexes and the Social Otherwise

AbstractEarly american Black Blueswomen—such as Ma Rainey, Alberta Hunter, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone—perform Blues as a praxis that both critiques and transforms the ways in which american Black people were—and continue to be—excluded from the construct of the human subject. Merleau‐Ponty's account of inter‐subjectivity is predicated on his account of the human subject who is always‐already in a social milieu in which they are never taken for an object. Subjectivity is affirmed through the subject's ability to differentiate itself from objects via sight. In this way the human subject is sensorially, affectively, epistemically, and axiologically organized as eye‐forward. The human subject's ability to exceed objectification runs counter to the lived experiences of a number of precaritized peoples, specifically, american Black people. If being seen without being objectified is the lived experience of the subject, then subjectivity is an exclusive way‐of‐ being in the world. Rather than inhabit this exclusion from human subjectivity as a lack, american Black people—as is evidenced by Blues—create a social otherwise with distinct ways of living—not just surviving or enduring—created within, but not wholly determined by, the pornotrope or the wake. This paper begins to sound out a way that this social otherwise breathes life into its own socio‐ethical experience via a turn to the aural. This paper takes up Blues to explore what expressive and affective ways‐of‐ being in the world are possible with an ear‐forward sensorial organization.

Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature

Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature

Lady Day on Screen

Jazz singer Billie Holiday (1915 – 1959) is a hugely influential figure. The impact of her vocal craft – particularly her distinctive timbre, adroit use of rubato, and compellingly emotional interpretations – can be traced across subsequent generations of singers (Szwed 2015). However, details of her turbulent personal life often overshadow explorations of her musical legacy. The most recent depiction of Lady Day’s life on screen, Lee Daniels’ The United States vs. Billie Holiday, is arguably the latest retrospective to fall into this trap. However, this article argues that its mixed reception might be indicative of a small but significant shift in how Holiday’s life and work are understood. Drawing on critical reactions to the film, it explores the ways in which a narrative shift in storytelling around Holiday can be identified, and how this can contribute to our understanding of the malleability of the posthumous careers of iconic musicians.

Strange Fruit & Other Plays by Harold Jaffe

Reviewed by: Strange Fruit & Other Plays by Harold Jaffe R. Sebastian Bennett (bio) strange fruit & other plays Harold Jaffe Black Scat Books https://blackscatbooks.com/2021/10/#:~:text=Harold%20Jaffe's%20new%20collection,we%20find%20ourselves%20in%20today. 144 pages; Print, $14.95 Harold Jaffe's latest volume, Strange Fruit & Other Plays, is a compelling exploration of Art and History. The work comprises a selection of dramatic texts, a new literary form for Jaffe, author of more than thirty books. The title of the book derives from Billie Holiday's anthemic song, "Strange Fruit," about the horror of a lynching in the South. The song was written by a Jewish high school teacher from the Bronx, who was also a writer and activist. He handed it to Billie Holiday after a gig in a Greenwich Village club. The song immediately moved her. Jaffe's dramas, which themselves expose racial issues and endorse humanistic cooperation, explore sociocultural and political themes and trends through a combination of character analyses and macroscopic investigations of cultural moments/shifts over the past century. The net result is a fresh, acute rendering of and commentary on artistic dimensions—especially as they relate to cultural crises. Jaffe's dramas can be divided into those that are primarily diagnostic representations and those that are aspirational representations—in the latter case pointing to aspects of society that could or should be ameliorated. As Jaffe has done so well in many of his other texts, his dramas diagnose issues that live at the core of current and historical conflicts, including racism, gender inequality, excessive commercialism (i.e., excessive selfishness). Other dramas include more aspirational themes, such as the function of art as a dream [End Page 155] that releases us from the confines and restrictions of our materialistic world; and the theme of return to innocence—a return to our purest, most spiritually complete form as children, a motif that expands on similar dynamics in the works of Blake, Whitman, and Wordsworth. From the basal position, Jaffe explores the art-making process, including consideration of the enigmatic question of whether the goal of art is fully met in its creation, or whether art is epistemologically furthered, in an augmented observer effect, via its distribution, acclaim, or status. This juxtaposition is seen most pointedly in the drama Artaud/Bataille, wherein Antonin Artaud "is writing to Jacques Riviere, literary editor of the important journal Nouvelle Revue Francais," after Artaud's work is rejected. Artaud queries, What if I were to inform you that … the so-called literary world, such as you have devoted your professional life to, means to me nothing. Less than nothing. It is precisely the "bleeding out into the absolute" which alone compels me. Jaffe expands his inquiry into status to include consideration of the commercialization of brands, or quests for brand awareness; and astutely connects this brand-questing to many individuals in our new technocracy who strive to create their own "brands," in essence selling themselves—which can be seen as a form of prostitution, although not necessarily sexual, wherein the ultimate goal is monetary gain, or somewhat less frequently, narcissistic satisfaction or ego enhancement. In Shredded Wheat, Jaffe vividly renders humans in the act of commercializing themselves through a conversation between an "Actor" and a "Brand": actor: Why are some humans called brands, Brand? brand: Humans are called brands because they market and whore themselves. actor: Why are some humans called actors? brand: International bad humans are called actors because they play the roles laid out for them. actor: Who uses the term actor and brand? brand: Fools and mofos who themselves are brands and actors use the term actors and brands. [End Page 156] At times, some of Jaffe's dramas morph into "meta-dramas," dramas within or about dramas, as in Jimi/Janis/JM, where Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin are simultaneously portrayed through their music and offstage commentary and through actors rendering the musicians' would-be personae onstage. This disconnection, explicitly manifest in the stage directions, represents the musicians' private and public images as well as the jagged gap between the public's view of a "celebrity" and that person's true "self." The...

Nocoastjazz

Nocoastjazz

마크 머피의 스캣 리듬 분석 연구 - 리듬 그루핑의 변칙 구조를 중심으로 -

The purpose of this study is to present an anomalous rhythm grouping structure by analyzing the rhythm grouping of scat used by Mark Murphy so that vocalists using scat can utilize various rhythms. In an interview with Kathryn Irene Reid, Jazz vocalist Mark Murphy said that the instrumentalist who had the greatest influence on his improvisation style was Miles Davis. and He said he listens to many jazz musicians, including Lester Young and Billie Holiday, to develop and train his musical style. In this way, Murphy has devised his own individual ways to extend music based on the bebop tradition, Murphy's solos use interesting melodic ideas and different chord tones and extensions to balance them out and creating his own unique scat syllables and creative rhythm patterns. In order to analyze from the point of view of grouping, the research method was centered on the anomalously expressed unique rhythm among the rhythms used in Murphy's studio album and live performance album, and the anomalous rhythm grouping structure applied to the analyzed song was presented. Murphy's scat rhythm deviates from the basic beat of the song, and the anomalous grouping structure with a length of two eighth notes, the length of one beat plus two of the eighth note triplets, and patterns of 6 beats and 5 beats is applied as a continuous repeating pattern, resulting in a unique rhythmic structure.

Lose Your Father

Lose Your Father

Introduction

Introduction

Cy McLean and the Trailblazers of Black Jazz in Prewar Central and Eastern Canada

Cy McLean and the Trailblazers of Black Jazz in Prewar Central and Eastern Canada Wade Pfaff (bio) THE STUDY OF JAZZ IN CANADA'S BLACK COMMUNITIES must begin with the fascinating stories of the lives of the first generation of big band leaders in the 1920s and 1930s, who overcame grave personal and professional obstacles due to their skin color in a turbulent time. Although these African Canadian musicians struggled to make lives for themselves as professionals, the fast-paced changes taking place in the music industry after the Second World War and the Canadian media's lack of attention combined to make them invisible to all but a few historians. This research note examines the career and family history of Cyril (Cy) McLean and compares his accomplishments with those of two other important band leaders who gained large audiences in Canada during the interwar period (1918-1939)–Ollie Wagner and Myron (Mynie) Sutton–in order to discuss the fact that there were racialized barriers in Canadian entertainment. Each of these men left their homes in small Black communities across the country and went on to create some of the first all-Black Canadian swing bands in Canada. The "Great Migration" of southern American Black people to the industrial urban cities of the northern United States during the first half of the 20th century occurred in an east-west fashion in Canada, with Black Canadians gravitating towards the centre of the country for community, opportunity, and a more equitable business climate. This research note also draws attention to the ways in which African diaspric music has helped shape Black Canadians' resilience and political will, which in turn has helped unite Canada's diverse African diasporic population. Each of the three musicians mentioned above–Cy McLean, Ollie Wagner, and Mynie Sutton–were important influencers in the fledgling jazz industry of Canada, but when the public's taste changed in later years all three men returned to physical labour jobs to support their families. These trailblazers of Central and Eastern Black Canadian jazz, sadly, are almost completely forgotten today, except by Canadian music historians. Their life stories are inspirational studies of perseverance, dedication to art, and the maintenance [End Page 121] of personal dignity in a society that was full of admiration for Black people's artistry yet lacked empathy for their lack of civil rights or poor quality of life. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Cy McLean, Toronto Star, 24 June 1969 (photographer Doug Griffin). Source: Toronto Star Photograph Archive, Object Number TSPA_0067429F. During the Great Depression in Canada, there were no federal laws dictating racial segregation. But right up to the end of the Second World War, local customs and regional business practices ensured that there were very [End Page 122] few premier performance venues in Central and Eastern Canada that allowed Black Canadian artists much less Black customers. The best jobs were always reserved for union members only, and Black people were not welcome in most Canadian union locals until Cy McLean and his band broke through these racial barriers in 1944. Prior to that landmark year, Black Canadian musicians had to play under an American union card or perhaps under the Coloured Clef Club of Montreal union card (an all-Black organization). Big stars from the United States, such as Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday, could play in the top venues, but they had to enter from the rear and arrange for dwellings themselves with the local Black community because reputable hotels in Central and Eastern Canada did not allow Black patrons. Cy McLean and the Rhythm Rompers were very active in Toronto during the Second World War, but by the 1960s, as swing music continued to lose popularity, McLean ended up playing his brand of "sweet" jazz in some of the less-desirable venues around Toronto with just one or two accompanists while maintaining a second job to support his family. Cy McLean's story is representative of many unknown artists' struggles, which were (and are) not unique in Black Canada even today. Cy McLean's family came to Canada as part of a modest migration from the West Indies that started in...

Blue Notes 2.0: The Diachronic Resonance of Langston Hughes During the George Floyd Protests: A Foreword

Blue Notes 2.0: The Diachronic Resonance of Langston Hughes During the George Floyd Protests: A Foreword

The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music

The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music

Jazz Feminism is to Soul as Purple is to Lavender

Jazz Feminism is to <i>Soul</i> as Purple is to Lavender

Recorded Speech and Virtual Collaboration in Jacob TV’s “Billie”

ABSTRACT Throughout Western music from the 1960s until today, there is a peculiar phenomenon: musical works in which the music is organized around audio recordings of the speaking voice. This article explores the role of the recorded speaker as a virtual collaborator—distanced by time and space—in creating the structure of the musical work. Both the speaker and the composer are agents in the creation of musical works for recorded speech. The speaker provides emotional expression, linguistic meaning, and a sense of embodied sound, a human focal point for the listener. The composer builds on the sonic resources provided by the speaker and adds musical frameworks that provide additional structure for the vocal utterances, reinforcing the linguistic meaning of the speech and transforming it into a structural feature of the music. Both the speaker and the composer contribute to the resulting musical work, and as such authorship is as distributed between these two agents. To illustrate this point, this article analyzes Jacob TV’s 2003 work “Billie” for saxophone and backing track, which is built around the speaking and singing voice of Billie Holiday. In doing so, the ethical tensions of the composer using an unknowing subject’s voice are considered.

Mapping the Lost Home: Psalm 137 and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing

Mapping the Lost Home: Psalm 137 and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing Rachel Ewing Jesmyn Ward’s 2017 novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, tells the story of Jojo, a thirteen-year-old biracial boy in coastal Mississippi, and his family as they struggle to navigate issues of grief and addiction rooted in the generational trauma of racist oppression. When Jojo’s father Michael, a former meth cook, is released from the Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as Parchman Farm, Jojo accompanies his mother Leonie, baby sister Kayla, and questionable family friend Misty on a road trip across the state to bring Michael home. Although the family is temporarily reunited, theirs is not a happy ending. Grandmother and matriarch Philomène dies of cancer; Jojo learns the horrific truth about his beloved grandfather River’s own time as a prisoner; and Leonie and Michael’s meth addiction intensifies. Anxious and restless, Jojo begins walking the woods near his home. In the final pages of the novel, such a walk leads him to something strange: a tree full of ghosts, with bird-like spirits perched two or three to a branch “all the way up to the top, to the feathered leaves” (282). The vision, which Kayla also sees when she and River follow Jojo, evokes the horrors of lynching, the “strange fruit” of Abel Meeropol’s poem and Billie Holiday’s famous song. Readers might also think of the tree of crucifixion, or the baobab tree of African legend.1 Considered alongside the ghosts’ behavior, however—the [End Page 143] “speaking” of the trauma of their death, and their longing remembrance of “home” when Kayla sings—the tree of ghosts functions as a modified iteration of the poplar(s) (or willow[s]) of Psalm 137, sometimes called the Tree of Lamentations, in which the exiled Judean singers hang their harps on the bank in Babylon. 1By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.2There on the poplars we hung our harps,3for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” 4How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?5If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill.6May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you,if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.2 The psalm has a long history in resistance art. Rose Lucas, among many others, explains its adaptation to “articulate Caribbean and African-American experiences of colonisation and its resistant voices” (2) to express an important liberation theme in Rasta reggae music, and to contrast European and Indigenous experiences in Australian culture. In linking the landscape of the Mississippi coast to the site of exile on the riverbanks of Babylon, Ward brings these associations to bear. As we will see, the adaptation of the psalmist’s tree and the actions of the ghosts—the “speaking” of their trauma, their participation in Kayla’s song, and their refusal to leave the branches—allows the final scene of the novel to encompass both cathartic release and a lament for the loss of a symbolically complex “home,” a lament for a loss that is both past and ongoing, atemporal and rooted in a history of racial oppression. [End Page 144] Avoiding overly simplistic optimism, the ending of the novel is an expression of trauma that in its very existence resists erasure, a complex act of mourning that maps the contours of an unbearable vanishing point as well as a possible path forward. I The adaptation of the tree of Psalm 137 emphasizes “home” as a symbolic and psychological space. Composed after the burning of Jerusalem, the psalm is a lament not only for a physical homeland and cultural identity but also for social bonds previously used to define subjecthood. In the novel, the ghost of the murdered Richie, a boy who served time in Parchman with River, explicitly connects the concept of home to love and family, rather than physical space: “Home...

Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia

Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia

"In her prophetic fury sewed the work": Remembering Sybil's Handkerchief and Magical Artistries in Djanet Sears' Harlem Duet

This paper examines the history of black women artistries, postcolonial magic, and music within Canadian playwright Djanet Sears’ 1997 Toronto production Harlem Duet. In a modern re-adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello, Sears’ Harlem Duet resituates literary historical symbols, like the infamous handkerchief, and Shakespearean hidden characters within a diasporic and empowered space of agency, intergenerational trauma, and reclamation. With the maternal theoretical foundation of Alice Walker’s work “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” this paper matrilineally connects Harlem Duet’s protagonist Billie with the artistic creator – the sybil/witch – of Shakespeare’s handkerchief and with famous blues artists like Billie Holiday. Using the handkerchief as a starting point, this paper analyzes both fictional and historical maternal generations in order to demonstrate this empowered history of artistic creation and music within diasporic spaces and communities.

What’s Whitney Got to Do with It: Black Female Triumph and Tragedy in the 2015 Lifetime Biopic Whitney

In 2015, the cable television network Lifetime broadcast the biopic Whitney, depicting the troubled life of the late superstar singer Whitney Houston. Whitney is the first film by director Angela Bassett, who, as actress, famously portraited Tina Turner in the biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It (Brian Gibson, 1993). In this article, I will first position Whitney within a larger tradition of the Hollywood biopic by making a comparison to earlier important biopics about black female entertainers, namely Lady Sings the Blues (Sidney J. Furie, 1972), starring Diana Ross as Billie Holiday, and What’s Love Got to Do with It. Second, I will discuss how the narratives of these three biopics tend to reduce their female subjects to victims, emphasizing the tragedy in their personal lives, while assigning much more agency to the male partners of these black female entertainers. Third and finally, I will analyze the final scenes of these three biopics in detail, as each presents a grand finale musical performance that seems to resolve the contradictions of the triumph and tragedy in their subject’s lives, yet in significantly different ways.

Michael Perez and Jessica McKee, eds. Billie Holiday: Essays on the Artistry and Legacy.

Michael Perez and Jessica McKee, eds. Billie Holiday: Essays on the Artistry and Legacy. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &amp; Company, Inc., 2019. vi + 169 pp. ISBN 1476674698 (pbk). $39.95.

Writing the Survivor: The Rape Novel in Late Twentieth-Century American Fiction by Robin E. Field

Reviewed by: Writing the Survivor: The Rape Novel in Late Twentieth-Century American Fiction by Robin E. Field Jerrica Jordan WRITING THE SURVIVOR: THE RAPE NOVEL IN LATE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN FICTION, by Robin E. Field. Clemson, SC: Clemson University Press, 2020. 256 pp. $120 hardback. Robin E. Field's monograph Writing the Survivor: The Rape Novel in Late Twentieth-Century American Fiction begins with a historical look at how the idea of rape consciousness and rape culture began, using the infamous rape scene from the film Gone with the Wind (1939) to set the tone for how representations of rape conditioned American viewers to downplay women's claims of sexual assault. Field's next example, Grace Metalious's novel Peyton Place (1956), depicts a writer empathizing toward characters experiencing rape and incest; however Field argues that the book's use of voyeurism did more to alienate real-life survivors from coming forward for help and assistance. These two examples help set the scene for those interested in how American culture desensitized reactions to claims of rape and sexual assualt and foreground the literary landscape that writers used to create societal awareness. The chapters of Writing the Survivor, archived by decade, move across the twentieth century to our present day in order to demonstrate the trajectory of silence, awareness, and need for survival regarding rape in both literature and culture. The chronological organization of Field's book creates an easy-to-follow structure for her readers. Field outlines the literary history of rape culture in her lengthy introduction, using a dual historical and cultural approach to understand how reading audiences internalized and responded to claims of sexual assault. In the five chapters that follow, Field pairs research from each selected decade with a close reading of the rape literature from the time period, beginning with the first chapter, "Rape Consciousness: From Activism to Text," which uses the 1970s as its archive. Field argues that this decade became the impetus for the anti-rape movement, beginning with activists' successfully redefining rape as a response of violence versus desire. As a result, Field claims, much of the literature that proliferated within the 1970s—including memoirs authored by Billie Holiday and Maya Angelou—place their focus on the experiences of the rape victim. [End Page 180] As the book progresses, Field complements her chronological organization by labeling the discussed female (and male) characters into three separate types: rape victims, rape survivors, or rape victim-survivors. As Field explains, "Many of the rape novels of the 1980s extend the rape narrative beyond the incident of assault to detail how women recover from rape" (p. 111). These different characterizations, she claims, depend on how readers understood rape and its repercussions within their particular climate. Victims, Field argues, await acknowledgement from their community, while survivors have entered the healing phase. In her usage of "victim-survivor," Field explains how the evolution of rape fiction has created a place of ambivalence where the recurrence and remembrance of one's trauma may conflict with the recovery process; Field argues that the third designation is necessary, as it provides textual reaffirmation of real-life individuals' personal dignity. Perhaps most notable about this book is Field's historical and contextual analysis of how writers of color and ethnicity navigate female reporting of rape in the third chapter, "'The Victim Demands Narrative': Writing the Perspective of the Rape Victim-Survivor in the Long 1980s." This chapter offers a glimpse at how literary examples of rape survivors reveal authors' decisions to balance political versus personal concerns. For these writers (and their characters), Field claims, the political becomes personal. Through the works of Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Sandra Cisneros, and Bharati Mukherjee, Field's argument suggests that characters' choices to report their rape—or remain silent—are not simply dependent on their reactions to rape; instead, as Field elucidates, whole communities often feel the punishment if and when a woman decides to come forward about her sexual abuse. In her close reading of Walker's Meridian (1976), for example, Field ties the title character's denouncement of her white friend's rape accusation to the probable anti-black violence such a...