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Blues Legacies and Black Feminism

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

Author Angela Y. Davis
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Paperback
$19.00 US
Knopf | Vintage
On sale Jan 26, 1999 | 464 Pages | 9780679771265
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Angela Davis gives us a new, radically transforming interpretation of the lives and music of three of the greatest singers of the 20th century.

She uses the biographies, careers, and performances of recorded songs by Bessie Smith, “Ma” Rainey, and Billie Holiday—the African-American women who dominated American popular music between 1910 and the 1940’s—to explore the dynamics and politics of American popular culture and the defining relationship of African Americans and African American culture to American society in the 20th century.  

“I have always understood myself as a knowledgeable, enthusiastic listener, but Angela Davis's book is a complete revelation to me and a serious re-education.” —Toni Morrison

“When ladies sang the blues, they also elaborated an aesthetics of resistance. By taking their lives and words so seriously, Angela Davis liberates the true voices of three of the most remarkable women in modern American history. This is a stunning contribution to our understanding of the dialectics of gender, race, and class.” —Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz

“Blues Legacies and Black Feminism is an intellectual tour de force. It is fitting that its extraordinary author is writing about blues women who, she shows, in their time, were no less insurgent and feminist than she.″ —Paula Giddings, author of When and Where I Enter
I.  I Used to Be Your Sweet Mama:  Ideology, Sexuality and Domesticity

II.  Blame It On the Blues:  Bessie Smith, “Ma” Rainey and the Politics of Blues Protest

III.  Mama’s Got The Blues:  Rivals, Girlfriends and Advisors

IV.  Here Come My Train:  Traveling Themes in Ma Rainey’s Blues

V.  Preaching the Blues:  Spirituality and Self-Consciousness

VI.  Up In Harlem Every Saturday Night:  Blues and the Black Aesthetic

VII.  When A Woman Loves A Man:  Social Implications of Billie Holiday’s Love Songs

VIII.  Strange Fruit:  Music and Social Consciousness

Lyrics to Songs Recorded by Gertrude “Ma” Rainey

Lyrics to Songs Recorded by Bessie Smith

Notes
Works Consulted
Index
Permissions Acknowledgments
Angela Y. Davis is a political activist, scholar, author, and speaker. She is an outspoken advocate for the oppressed and exploited, writing on Black liberation, prison abolition, the intersections of race, gender, and class, and international solidarity with Palestine. She is the author of several books, including Women, Race, and Class and Are Prisons Obsolete? She is the subject of the acclaimed documentary Free Angela and All Political Prisoners and is distinguished professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. View titles by Angela Y. Davis

About

Angela Davis gives us a new, radically transforming interpretation of the lives and music of three of the greatest singers of the 20th century.

She uses the biographies, careers, and performances of recorded songs by Bessie Smith, “Ma” Rainey, and Billie Holiday—the African-American women who dominated American popular music between 1910 and the 1940’s—to explore the dynamics and politics of American popular culture and the defining relationship of African Americans and African American culture to American society in the 20th century.  

“I have always understood myself as a knowledgeable, enthusiastic listener, but Angela Davis's book is a complete revelation to me and a serious re-education.” —Toni Morrison

“When ladies sang the blues, they also elaborated an aesthetics of resistance. By taking their lives and words so seriously, Angela Davis liberates the true voices of three of the most remarkable women in modern American history. This is a stunning contribution to our understanding of the dialectics of gender, race, and class.” —Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz

“Blues Legacies and Black Feminism is an intellectual tour de force. It is fitting that its extraordinary author is writing about blues women who, she shows, in their time, were no less insurgent and feminist than she.″ —Paula Giddings, author of When and Where I Enter

Table of Contents

I.  I Used to Be Your Sweet Mama:  Ideology, Sexuality and Domesticity

II.  Blame It On the Blues:  Bessie Smith, “Ma” Rainey and the Politics of Blues Protest

III.  Mama’s Got The Blues:  Rivals, Girlfriends and Advisors

IV.  Here Come My Train:  Traveling Themes in Ma Rainey’s Blues

V.  Preaching the Blues:  Spirituality and Self-Consciousness

VI.  Up In Harlem Every Saturday Night:  Blues and the Black Aesthetic

VII.  When A Woman Loves A Man:  Social Implications of Billie Holiday’s Love Songs

VIII.  Strange Fruit:  Music and Social Consciousness

Lyrics to Songs Recorded by Gertrude “Ma” Rainey

Lyrics to Songs Recorded by Bessie Smith

Notes
Works Consulted
Index
Permissions Acknowledgments

Author

Angela Y. Davis is a political activist, scholar, author, and speaker. She is an outspoken advocate for the oppressed and exploited, writing on Black liberation, prison abolition, the intersections of race, gender, and class, and international solidarity with Palestine. She is the author of several books, including Women, Race, and Class and Are Prisons Obsolete? She is the subject of the acclaimed documentary Free Angela and All Political Prisoners and is distinguished professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. View titles by Angela Y. Davis

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