Bibliograph

Blues legacies and Black feminism, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday, Angela Y. Davis

Type

Label

Blues legacies and Black feminism, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday, Angela Y. Davis

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references and index

resource.biographical

contains biographical information

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Blues legacies and Black feminism

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

37418303

Responsibility statement

Angela Y. Davis

Sub title

Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday

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 communitiesThrough 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

Classification