Arts & Culture
Goodbye to the blues
Published 05 April 2004
Billie Holiday is remembered as much for her tragic life as for her beautiful voice. But now, thanks to a new generation of female artists and musicians, a more positive Lady Day legacy is emerging
Sathima Bea Benjamin was an aspiring young vocalist in 1950s Cape Town when she first read Billie Holiday's autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, and afterwards heard one of her recordings. A few years later, the book was banned by the apartheid government, but Benjamin had already fallen deeply under the spell of Lady Day. Decades later, following years of exile in Europe and the US, and after working with such jazz legends as Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn and Kenny Barron, Benjamin wrote and recorded her own Holiday tribute song, "Lady Day". Avoiding any reference to the tragic aspects of the artist's personal life, the song focuses on what made Holiday one of the most original and important musicians of the 20th century: "Oh but it's her sound, her sound/that I can hear again and again,/in the echo, in the echo of this music that we play". Benjamin emphasises the word "sound", stretching it out, repeating it along with "again" and "echo" several times, so that the repeated words dominate both the lyric and the melody. At no point does she try to sound like Holiday, but confidently renders the tune in her own style.
Since Holiday's death in 1959, her life has been interpreted and represented in a number of ways. Benjamin's tribute song expresses the latest version of the Holiday legend, which has emerged thanks to the efforts of a largely female group of writers and musicians. These women stress Holiday's artistry and courage, without attempting to deny the more troubling aspects of her life, including her history of drug abuse and incarceration, and the racism and domestic violence she suffered.
This reappraisal has in part been prompted by the reissue of her full body of work over the past few years. Alongside such classic torch songs as "Don't Explain", "Good Morning Heartache" and "My Man", a number of comprehensive box sets have featured more upbeat tracks such as "No Regrets", "Billie's Blues", "Now or Never" and "My Sweet Hunk o' Trash". As a result, fans have become acquainted with a new Holiday - a woman who was not just unlucky in love, but who was hip, witty, sassy and cool. Listening to the full range of Holiday's songs has helped us to form a more complete impression of the qualities that made her distinctive as an artist: how she approached a lyric; her inventiveness with melody; her sense of timing; and her interaction with other musicians. Many of these reissues have been accompanied by a stunning array of photographs, which also show Holiday in a fresh light. Over the years, a few well-known images have come to symbolise the Holiday legend: the beautiful sepia portrait of her as a young woman, gardenia pinned to her temple, eyes filled with mystery and melancholy; the iconic Milt Hinton photograph of an older Lady, glass in hand, looking down as if nodding; or the shot of her gazing into the distance, tired and worn. Now these pictures have been joined by others telling a different story: Holiday in concert, elbow bent, fingers snapping, wearing dark glasses and a mink coat; or in a turban, smiling, dressed in a monogrammed shirt.
It is this complex, multidimensional artist and woman that Sarah Cropper sought to capture in her recent six-part BBC radio documentary, Billie and Me. In the series, interviews with singers, musicians and writers who have been inspired by Holiday were interspersed with sequences of Holiday rehearsing, recording and reminiscing about her life. Several of the artists who featured in the radio documentary are also involved in the "Billie and Me" concert at the Barbican. They include Neneh Cherry, Fontella Bass, Angelique Kidjo, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Carleen Anderson, Susheela Raman and Amy Winehouse.
The line-up reflects Holiday's global appeal. Her music is widely listened to not only throughout America and Europe, but in Africa and Asia, too. The Cuban Omara Portuondo, the Cape Verdian Cesaria Evora and the Brazilian Bebel Gilberto all see Holiday as an important influence. And it is not just vocalists who have been inspired by her. Horn players such as Miles Davis and, more recently, James Carter have acknowledged the effect of her work on their playing, as do two of the participants in the Barbican tribute concert - the drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and bassist Me'shell NdegeOcello. None of these performers falls strictly within the jazz tradition. They blur national and stylistic boundaries, and in so doing create music that is as original and irresistible as that of Lady Day herself.
Like Benjamin, these vocalists do not try to sound like Holiday; instead, they take advantage of the space that she opened up through her willingness to take risks, to be vulnerable, to remain true to her sound and sensibility, and to create in the face of - or perhaps because of - the obstacles she encountered. They do not romanticise or sentimentalise her, nor do they judge her. They acknowledge the contradictions that made her only too human. Most importantly, they listen - to the unique phrasing and impeccable timing of this exceptional poet and storyteller. All are drawn by the intimate nature of her singing, her gift for restraint and understatement, as well as her exceptional ability to communicate.
Neneh Cherry puts it best when she says: "So Billie's legacy is not to continue singing songs of abuse and sorrow or to copy her singing style, but to evolve the wisdom and spirituality of songs like 'Strange Fruit' and 'God Bless the Child'." By choosing to draw on the wisdom and spirituality of Holiday's music rather than returning always to the pain and tragedy of her life, Cherry and her contemporaries are investing the legend with new meaning. This is possibly the greatest tribute that Lady's 21st-century daughters could make.
"Billie and Me", at Barbican Hall, London EC2 (0845 120 7550) on 5 April, is part of the annual "Only Connect" series, which runs until 24 April (www.barbican.org.uk/onlyconnect)
Farah Jasmine Griffin is the author of If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery: in search of Billie Holiday (One World)
What Holiday means to us
Amy Winehouse As a singer, there is little you can do that Billie did not pioneer. Her range of skills was vast and mostly overlooked, which is why these "Billie and Me" shows are so important.
Kenneth Clarke Billie Holiday is certainly my favourite jazz singer, slightly edging out Bessie Smith. Billie was an intensely emotional singer. Particularly in her early career, she had a natural musicality, a sense of rhythm and sometimes a sense of fun. Some people get too maudlin and sentimental about her later work, but the best of it is very powerful music.
Jamie Cullum For me, Billie Holiday represents an artist for whom technique was immaterial to her whole sound. Despite this, her readings of many standards have become the definitive ones. She used her damaged voice to transcend melody and rhythm, and left her indelible and swinging mark on everything she did.
Neneh Cherry It's important that young people know just how strong Billie Holiday was. She was a role model, an innovator, an activist. Many black women are doing well today, from Beyonce to Condoleezza Rice, but it is important to remember how difficult Holiday's times were, especially for a woman who wasn't white. Billie's achievement is that she lives on.
Dee Dee Bridgewater I think of Billie Holiday as a singer with a transparent voice, and by that I mean you could read her emotions and her life experiences into each song she sang. And I think that is what has endeared her to so many different generations. She is to jazz what Marilyn Monroe and James Dean were to the cinema, what Elvis Presley was to rock'n'roll. I feel that her life became a kind of emblem for vocal jazz.
Eartha Kitt I loved Billie Holiday because she had the courage to give voice to her pain. She suffered through everything she did, she was always in trouble, always looking for love, for help - and that's what you hear in her voice. She cried every time she sang. You can hear her soul.
Bonnie Greer Lady Day was more than just a great singer and musician. If she was simply that, she would have been Ella Fitzgerald. If she had ended up merely a suffering icon upon whom her audiences could pile their travails, then she would have been Judy Garland. She was these things and more: both her own invention and that of the record labels, jazz press and her audiences. But through the maze of all this, one thing comes through - she used her voice to express a truth about being black and being a woman that no one before her did and no one after her has done. She was a triptych: herself, the music and us.
Geoff Dyer It's the Billie Holiday story or legend I respond to rather than the material. I find her relationship with Lester Young moving - the way the sad drift of his playing offers a hand to steady her, or an arm around her shoulder. I've forgotten the details now, but I think they were not lovers, and there's something poignant about that: the pairing of these two damaged people that should have taken place (in contrast to all the ones that shouldn't have but did) and which happens only in the music.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
