Blues legacies and Black feminism
Subtitle: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday
By: Angela Y. Davis.
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 427
Subjects: Rainey, Ma, 1886-1939; Smith, Bessie, 1894-1937; Holiday, Billie, 1915-1959; Blues (Music) -- History and criticism; Blues (Music) -- Texts; Feminism and music -- United States; Women blues musicians -- United States; African American women
Description: 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.

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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.