Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday by Angela Y. Davis.
The former slaves economic status had not undergone a radical transformation - they were not less impoverished than they had been during slavery. It was the status of their personal relationships that was revolutionized.... Sexuality thus was one of the most tangible domains in which emancipation was acted upon and through which its meanings were expressed. Sovereignty in sexual matters marked an important divide between life during slavery and life after emancipation.
I noticed a pile of these books at The Strand while Christmas shopping and thought it was kind of published with me in mind - a prominent 60's radical writing literary criticism about blues music? What's not to love?
And I did enjoy this very much, though it is thinner than it appears. Literally, it is a 200 page essay with another 220 pages of lyrics, endnotes and sources, so you appear to be reading a tome when the whole thing is very brief. It is solidly argued, but some of it is a testament to the academic practice of taking common knowledge and re-stating it in intellectually precise terms. Take the final sentence quoted above - "Sovereignty in sexual matters marked an important divide between life during slavery and life after emancipation." No one who is even briefly familiar with the blues will be surprised to think of sexuality as an important area of freedom within that art form (Think Muddy Waters, "Mannish Boy" or Duke Ellington's "Rocks in My Bed" or, more to the point, Bessie Smith singing "Gimme a Pigfoot" or "Nobody's Business if I Do." However, it is worth the effort to read a really smart person think this through.
Davis's argument about the last song I just mentioned "Nobody's Business If I Do," is that Smith and Rainey and Holiday use the song to proclaim the importance of their freedom, their agency to engage in whatever relationships they want, whether they meet conventional social standards or not. She finds an unusual strength in Rainey and Smith's laments about abusive, disappearing lovers in that she sees these women owning their own pain and proudly surviving it. The pains of love are real, but they are not the pains imposed by white men, they are pains of free life and these women can handle that freedom.
Davis does an admirable job of discussing how Rainey and Smith, Smith in particular, opened up a space for African Americans to think about love and autonomy, abusive relationships and homosexuality in a popular forum. Davis is unshakeable in her belief that these gutsy, raw performers were artists of the highest order and that their influence on American culture has gone under appreciated. The history of black musicians being urged to take up more European, symphonic styles is harshly critiqued here.
Her inclusion of Billie Holiday in the title is somewhat misleading. There are two essays that touch upon Holiday, whose output was more American Songbook than classic blues. In the first, Davis argues that Holiday's artistry lay in taking mediocre material and making it art. A fine point, but it amounts to fandom more than analysis. She closes with a very solid article on "Strange Fruit" arguing for its place in the center of American protest songs. It is a good essay, but not a hard point to make.
On the whole, this is a great book for the streaming age - spend a day reading about and listening to Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, with occasional excursions into Alberta Hunter and Sippie Wallace. Not a bad way to pass the time.
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