Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday

Wonderful book. Angela Davis shatters the myth that black women blues singers were gifted but tragic, substance addicted artists. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday 'represented a consciousness profoundly at odds with mainstream American culture... (they) laid the groundwork for an aesthetic that allowed for the celebration of social, moral, and sexual values outside the constraints...more

Wonderful book. Angela Davis shatters the myth that black women blues singers were gifted but tragic, substance addicted artists. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday 'represented a consciousness profoundly at odds with mainstream American culture... (they) laid the groundwork for an aesthetic that allowed for the celebration of social, moral, and sexual values outside the constraints imposed my middle-class respectability'. Recommended to all music fans.   hide

An excellent analysis of early women's blues as social critique.