| Description |
xx, 427 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Contents |
I used to be your sweet mama : ideology, sexuality, and domesticity -- Mama's got the blues : rivals, girlfriends, and advisors -- Here come my train : traveling themes and women's blues -- Blame it on the blues : Bessie Smith, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, and the politics of blues protest -- Preaching the blues : spirituality and self-consciousness -- Up in Harlem every Saturday night : blues and the Black aesthetic -- When a woman loves a man : social implications of Billie Holiday's love songs -- "Strange fruit" : music and social consciousness -- Lyrics to songs recorded by Gertrude "Ma" Rainey -- Lyrics to songs recorded by Bessie Smith. |
| Summary |
Jazz, it is widely accepted, is the signal original American contribution to world culture. Angela Davis shows us how the roots of that form in the blues must be viewed not only as a musical tradition but as a life-sustaining vehicle for an alternative black working-class collective memory and social consciousness profoundly at odds with mainstream American middle-class values. And she explains how the tradition of black women blues singers - represented by Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday - embodies not only an artistic triumph and aesthetic dominance over a hostile popular music industry but an unacknowledged proto-feminist consciousness within working-class black communities. |
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Through a close and riveting analysis of these artists' performances, words, and lives, Davis uncovers the unmistakable assertion and uncompromising celebration of non-middle-class, non-heterosexual social, moral, and sexual values. |
| Subject |
Blues (Music) -- History and criticism.
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Blues (Music) -- Texts.
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Feminism and music -- United States.
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Women blues musicians -- United States.
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African American women singers -- United States.
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Rainey, Ma, 1886-1939.
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Smith, Bessie, 1894-1937.
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Holiday, Billie, 1915-1959.
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| ISBN |
067945005X |
|
9780679450054 |
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