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macbethgonzalez's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
tangleroot_eli's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Although I sometimes found Davis’s arguments frustratingly circular (“I propose that Smith’s lyrics say A, B, and C, which I will prove by quoting X, Y, and Z lyrics”), this is a powerful book. A must-read for anyone passionate about the blues, Black feminism, or the importance of the arts in discussions of race, gender, class, and sexuality.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Racism, and Sexism
Moderate: Slavery and Religious bigotry
Minor: Drug use, Homophobia, and Alcoholism
davyt's review against another edition
Incredibly dense book tackling themes of feminism in black art that are shockingly progressive and out-right ignored historically. This book was written in the late nineties with artist like Tracy Chapman and Erykah Badu being mentioned in the closing paragraphs as catalysts of some of the same sentiments the three main women discussed in the book represented. It’s disheartening to see in genres like hip-hop, contemporary female artists like Little Simz are being so widely ignored and not respected despite making clearly some of the best music in the genre. Artists like Megan Thee Stallion are getting torn down for structuring songs around female sexuality similar to Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith in their time.
cnidariar3x's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.75
Academic in prose, but manages to be gripping nonetheless.
Roughly 150 pages are printed lyrics to Ma Rainey's and Bessie Smith's recorded works.
Is it problematic of me to have wanted to read more material on Billie Holiday? Perhaps thats not the intention of this book.
The knowledge and insight provided herein on Ma Rainey & Bessie Smith (among others such as Ethel Waters and Clara Smith) as well as the cultural context surrounding them is invaluable.
Roughly 150 pages are printed lyrics to Ma Rainey's and Bessie Smith's recorded works.
Is it problematic of me to have wanted to read more material on Billie Holiday? Perhaps thats not the intention of this book.
The knowledge and insight provided herein on Ma Rainey & Bessie Smith (among others such as Ethel Waters and Clara Smith) as well as the cultural context surrounding them is invaluable.
chrisiant's review against another edition
5.0
Overall I really loved this book and was so glad I ended up borrowing it to read on a four-hour bus ride. Davis' prose is very dense and academic, at times almost too dense to wade through. I can see that being a turn-off for many readers, and it's unfortunate, because I think there's a lot of really fabulous and useful points in here. My only other criticism is that it seemed to me Davis was sometimes contorting to get the meaning out of a song that fit her argument. I generally gave her the benefit of the doubt, because so much of the meaning she was wringing from these songs came from the elements of their performance, which is obviously hard to glean from lyrics alone.
Beyond those two things, there is really nothing but awesome about this book. Davis makes numerous insightful points about the role of blues women in creating space and consciousness for black feminism. Their songs expressed the new-found sexual agency of black individuals after slavery, frankly acknowledging and celebrating women's sexual agency. They expressed the black individual experience as separate from the community experience focused on in the music of slavery, but sang them to a wide audience and addressed them in ways that called for recognition of collective experience. The songs also baldly, and without judgment, discussed topics taboo in middle-class society such as domestic violence, homosexuality, multiple relationships, prison, and poverty.
Beyond those two things, there is really nothing but awesome about this book. Davis makes numerous insightful points about the role of blues women in creating space and consciousness for black feminism. Their songs expressed the new-found sexual agency of black individuals after slavery, frankly acknowledging and celebrating women's sexual agency. They expressed the black individual experience as separate from the community experience focused on in the music of slavery, but sang them to a wide audience and addressed them in ways that called for recognition of collective experience. The songs also baldly, and without judgment, discussed topics taboo in middle-class society such as domestic violence, homosexuality, multiple relationships, prison, and poverty.
krayfish1's review against another edition
4.0
The first six chapters were textual analysis of the songs of Ma Rainy and Bessie Smith, chapter seven was about how Billie Holiday transformed trite lyrics into something interesting (so it's the one chapter you really can't understand/engage with without finding a recording), and the last chapter is about the song "Strange Fruit".
Davis uses a dense, academic style of writing. She is arguing against historians who paint the blues as a genre where only men did anything important and against commentators who regarded the blues as low-brow trashy music.
A few arguments:
--The songs are aimed at women and giving advice to women, so it's not all jealousy all the time
--The theme of travel shows up in women's blues songs quite a bit, so it's not all "men travel, women cry"
--Being in control over their own sexuality and marriage choices was one of the signs that they were no longer living under slavery, so singing about relationships was important
--Singing about domestic violence is a precursor to some of the tactics used in the 1970's women's movement (naming an issue and making it public)
--There was a similar amount of domestic violence in communities that sing about "I love my man even though he beats me" and communities that sing about "Ah, sweet mystery of life at last I've found you", and one of those communities is more honest.
--A number of songs are about the prevalence of jail and menial labor in the lives of black people, and this counts as protest.
--Harlem Renaissance people wanted to distance themselves from the blues, because they were caught up in middle class morality and "high-brow" art.
Davis also transcribed Rainey and Smith's recorded songs.
Side note: Smith's "Kitchen Man" has got a ridiculous amount of innuendo in it, it's great.
Davis uses a dense, academic style of writing. She is arguing against historians who paint the blues as a genre where only men did anything important and against commentators who regarded the blues as low-brow trashy music.
A few arguments:
--The songs are aimed at women and giving advice to women, so it's not all jealousy all the time
--The theme of travel shows up in women's blues songs quite a bit, so it's not all "men travel, women cry"
--Being in control over their own sexuality and marriage choices was one of the signs that they were no longer living under slavery, so singing about relationships was important
--Singing about domestic violence is a precursor to some of the tactics used in the 1970's women's movement (naming an issue and making it public)
--There was a similar amount of domestic violence in communities that sing about "I love my man even though he beats me" and communities that sing about "Ah, sweet mystery of life at last I've found you", and one of those communities is more honest.
--A number of songs are about the prevalence of jail and menial labor in the lives of black people, and this counts as protest.
--Harlem Renaissance people wanted to distance themselves from the blues, because they were caught up in middle class morality and "high-brow" art.
Davis also transcribed Rainey and Smith's recorded songs.
Side note: Smith's "Kitchen Man" has got a ridiculous amount of innuendo in it, it's great.
jamiecoughlin's review against another edition
5.0
A fascinating education on the history of the classic blues era and into the early jazz era, specifically through a feminist lens. Super fun read for the poetics of blues and how these three women used their art and voices to expand, articulate and shift an entire cultural consciousness. Loved it.