TY - BOOK ID - 99654023 TI - Blues legacies and Black feminism : Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday PY - 1999 SN - 067945005X 9780679450054 0679771263 9780679771265 9780307574442 PB - New York Pantheon Books DB - UniCat KW - Blues (Music) KW - History and criticism KW - Texts KW - Feminism and music KW - United States KW - Women blues musicians KW - Smith, Bessie KW - Rainey, Ma KW - African American women KW - muziek KW - muziekgeschiedenis KW - Verenigde Staten KW - Afro-Amerikanen KW - Afro-Amerikaanse cultuur KW - blues KW - jazz KW - vrouwen KW - vrouwelijkheid KW - feminisme KW - seksualiteit KW - 78 KW - Afro-American women KW - Women, African American KW - Women, Negro KW - Women KW - Blues musicians KW - Women musicians KW - Music and feminism KW - Music KW - Rainey, Ma, KW - Smith, Bessie, KW - Holiday, Billie, KW - Holliday, Billie, KW - Fagan, Eleanora, KW - Holiday, Eleanora, KW - McKay, Eleanora, KW - Holiday, Billy, KW - Lady Day, KW - Smith, Elizabeth, KW - Rainey, Gertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett, KW - Pridgett, Gertrude, KW - Holiday, Billie KW - anno 1900-1999 KW - Empress of the Blues KW - United States of America KW - Pop music KW - Singing KW - Black feminism UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:99654023 AB - From one of this country's most important intellectuals comes a brilliant analysis of the blues tradition that examines the careers of three crucial black women blues singers through a feminist lens. Angela Davis provides the historical, social, and political contexts with which to reinterpret the performances and lyrics of Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday as powerful articulations of an alternative consciousness profoundly at odds with mainstream American culture. The works of Rainey, Smith, and Holiday have been largely misunderstood by critics. Overlooked, Davis shows, has been the way their candor and bravado laid the groundwork for an aesthetic that allowed for the celebration of social, moral, and sexual values outside the constraints imposed by middle-class respectability. Through meticulous transcriptions of all the extant lyrics of Rainey and Smith -- published here in their entirety for the first time -- Davis demonstrates how the roots of the blues extend beyond a musical tradition to serve as a consciousness-raising vehicle for American social memory. A stunning, indispensable contribution to American history, as boldly insightful as the women Davis praises, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism is a triumph. -- Back cover. ER -