IndexIntroductionBillie Holiday's influences and her connection to jazzThe impact that Billie Holiday's childhood had on her life choicesMy manConclusionBibliographyIntroductionBillie Holiday, born on April 7, 1915, she was an extremely influential musician on the jazz scene during her career that spanned over 30 decades starting in 1929. Billie Holiday was noted as a pioneer of her times, not only for her singing style but also for her protest song "Strange Fruits" during the Jim Crow era. In the 1930s and 1940s Holiday had success on record labels such as Brunswick, Columbia and Decca Records and is famous for songs such as God Bless the Child, T'ain't Everyone's Business If I Do, My Man and Strange Fruits. My essay will demonstrate how Billie Holiday's experiences in infancy and early childhood shaped the way she interpreted unremarkable love songs while evoking complex emotions during her performances and recordings. I will focus on the social context of Billie Holiday's career and how her turbulent childhood, abusive relationships, the Great Depression, the Great Migration, the African American cottonwood culture, and the racism she encountered during the times of Jim Crow helped shape his art. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Billie Holiday's Influences and Connection to Jazz Although Holiday had no musical education, her voice was unique, masterful in quality, style and her work helped define Jazz. She created her own jazz musical style by imitating the swing and rhythmic nuances of Louis Armstrong along with the self-expression and vocal power of Bessie Smith. Barney Josephson, founder of the Café Society where Holiday performed, recounts one of her comments: "I don't think I'm singing. I feel like I'm blowing a horn. What comes out is what I hear. I hate straight singing. I have to change the melody according to the way I do it.' The great jazz instrumentalist appreciated Holiday because she sang with many distinctive characteristics, such as fluctuations in tone to create contrasting elements in her phrasing, which is what a musician would do with a physical instrument. “Gloomy Sunday” and “Solitude” show this characteristic very well. As a child, Holiday encountered her “first good jazz” in a brothel where she ran errands, Holiday asked to stay and listen to the recordings by Armstrong and Smith on the victrola where he spent many hours. West End Blues recorded by Armstrong in 1928 was the first time he heard someone sing without using words (holiday 2018). This triggered her fascination, which meant so much to her; the meaning changed every time he heard it depending on how he felt, whether he was happy or sad to the point of crying. This connection to an art form that allows musicians to improvise musically and express themselves emotionally is a clear demonstration of how Holiday connects music to how she felt, consciously or unconsciously. Listening to Louis Armstrong we can hear how he influenced Holiday's singing style. His 1939 recording of "Them There Eyes" is a good example of how Holiday phrases a song just as Armstrong did in 1931. Holiday's rendition of songs also captured the attention of his audience; his phrasing kept them hooked on every lyric he sang. “Strange Fruits” is a great example of this effect. Holiday was able to transform the so-called "Tin Pan Ally Songs" and challenge them by connecting them to her life, Burnett James' essay "Billie Holiday and the Art ofCommunication" emphasizes that Billie's musical style and emotional sensitivity were not of the kind that are likely to thrive with the more rigid form of classic blues. She needed the kind of melody over which she could exert her will, the ones she could and reshape according to his musical and emotional purpose, and from which he could create something personal.rather than social or racial His art was always turned inward, into one's heart, and to the discovery of their simple and profound truths a melody that has something to do with you, you just hear it, and when you sing it, other people hear it.'” Holiday once explained. Here we can see a clear and conscious connection between Holiday's musicianship and her emotions, which captured the attention of her audience. The Impact Billie Holiday's Childhood Had on Her Life Choices Holiday, born to two young teenagers in Baltimore, was left at a young age with her cousin Ide after her father left and her mother died. went to look for work. Being left behind would prove to be one of many turbulent moments in Holiday's life. While living in extreme poverty, Holiday was abused and unduly beaten regularly as a disciplinary method by her mother's cousin, Ida. Holiday not only endured abuse from home; she was also raped at the age of ten while living with her mother who returned to Baltimore at that time. Unfortunately, Holiday was sent to a convent for inciting her rapist. The unnecessary cruel treatment suffered by the nuns; while he recalls the trauma, in his book Lady Sings the Blues, of having his hands stained with blood from breaking down a guarded door to leave, along with the abuse of Ida, his rapist and the arrest at the age of 14 for streets of Harlem as prostitution would actually have an effect on Holiday's adult life. Besides the fact that Holiday's father was absent and her mother left her at a young age, Holiday would have experienced too much turmoil for a girl her age. I would like to address the effects that child abuse had on Holiday's adulthood and make a case, and that is one of the reasons Holiday sang the way she did. Research has shown that children's social context can have a major influence on their development and adulthood. Professor Kevin Brown (Word Health Organization) has published a report outlining types of abuse which are generally divided into five types: physical, sexual, emotional, psychological abuse and neglect. Holiday was the victim of four, potentially all five types of abuse during her childhood. The report also states that children who are abused by more than one person subsequently suffer more problems than those abused by one person, as in Holiday's case. The negative impact of abuse and neglect on children should not be underestimated, especially in relation to their long-term impact on physical, mental health and development. I highlighted the negative outcomes resulting from child abuse in the report, which I believe relate to Billie Holiday's adulthood: Emotional and behavioral problems Alcohol and drug abuse Increased risk of further victimization Antisocial and criminal acts There is also research showing that children who are deprived of contact with their mother may often subsequently experience difficulties due to poor attachment bonds (Bowlby and Ainsworth, n.d.). I would also like to take into account the absence of Billie Holiday's father, Clarence Holiday. Parents shape how we see and organize the meaning of other human interactions. Thus a woman's early relationship with her father, who is usually the first male object of her love, shapes her conscious and unconscious perceptionsof what she can expect and what is acceptable in a romantic partner. The Christmas repertoire most often consisted of love songs, reflecting the relationships he had encountered, such as "Don't Explain" and "Billie's Blues". To support my thesis I would like to consider Holiday's marriages and connect them to the context in which her career developed. Holiday's marriages would prove violent and aid the downward spiral into drug addiction. In 1941 Holiday met and married James Monroe, a drug dealer and pimp (Horsley 2019). When Monroe was convicted of drug trafficking, Holiday took up with Joe Guy, a musician who also supplied her with drugs. After her mother's death, Holiday began drinking and using drugs more frequently. Haunted by a deep fear of loneliness, she became abnormally dependent on her male lovers. In 1947 Holiday and Joe Guy were arrested and charged with receiving and concealing a narcotic; Holiday, was sentenced to prison. John Levy, Holiday's lover and manager, would then take his turn to exploit her (Horsley 2019). Her relationship with Louis McKay began in 1950 and gave her a sense of security and the ability to reduce her drug addiction for a while. But years of drinking, smoking and drug use were taking their toll on Holiday's voice and health. In 1956 she was arrested again for possession of narcotics, this time with Louis McKay eventually leaving when Billie hooked up with another manipulative and violent man, Earle Zaidins. The effects of Holiday's lifestyle began to become apparent in her performances. Arranger Ray Ellis was disappointed by his voice, which bore the scars of his alcoholism and his willful disregard for his health. Yet in songs like “For All We Know,” that shadow of self-destruction makes the phrasing sweeter and the glimpses of optimism even more disturbing. In 1959, the year of his death, during his last live appearances he performed "Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone" with style and grace, his life was in his voice. It's clear to see the impact of Holiday's abusive childhood. influenced her choices as an adult, taking into account Dr. Kromberg's report and article. Perhaps, then, Billie's traumatic childhood is a good place to try to understand her and her artistic talent. Being constantly abandoned by her mother and father, rape, injustice, treatment by nuns, and prostitution may have contributed to her diminished sense of self. These feelings would also go some way to explaining her abnormally dependent personality, her desire to attach herself to someone who would love and care for her, and then, once in a relationship, do anything, including physical violence, to keep her . Angela Davis writes: “Many of Holiday's songs are suffused with loneliness and sadness – and she remains unmatched in her ability to recreate these voids musically. With the finesse of his phrasing and his impeccable sense of swing, he offers us a glimpse into the human emotion of desperation.” “My Man,” first written in French (“Mon Homme') by Jacques Charles and later performed by Holiday, is an example of Holiday's emotional interpretation of love songs. The original recording is faster and has a fun feel compared to Holiday's interpretation, which is slow and melancholy. Holiday's message manages to escape the ideological constraints of the lyrics. She became a legend in her time for her role as a tragic victim of male abuse, racism, drugs and alcohol, and appropriated this role for the narrative ballads she chose in the final years of her career, such as “Ain't If I Do It , it's nobody's business." His previous repertoire wasconsisting of the laments of a woman unlucky in love, such as "Lover Man" and "My Man". My Man “I don't know why I should, It's not true, He beats me too Oh my friend” , I love him so much, He will never know. My whole life is just desperation, But I don't care” To further understand the context in which Holiday's career developed, from the perspective of the Great Depression, the Great Migrations, racism, and African-American popular culture, I would like to demonstrate the effects that these had on Holiday's career. Jazz was known in America before the Roaring 1920s, its roots in the slaves who came to America. However, jazz was actually maturing in New Orleans, where Louis Armstrong was born and raised. During the Great Migration in the early 1900s Louis Armstrong left New Orleans along with many African Americans to flee the South in search of a better life. While Jim Crow laws gripped African Americans in the South, life in the North was less intense. Between 1910 and 1939 the first wave of Southern African Americans undertook the “Great Migration,” which began due to World War I, and led to the industrialization of urban areas, making way for African Americans to fill the work spaces. The second significant cause of the Great Migration was the desire of African Americans to escape Jim Crow, a racial caste system that featured strict anti-black laws. The Great Migration had caused massive demographic change across America. New York and other large cities have seen a 40% increase in the African American population. In Harlem, the African-American population reached nearly 200,000 in the 1920s. This would lead to a major artistic movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, which would have a huge impact on the culture of the time. Louis Armstrong arrived in New York where the Harlem Renaissance had contributed to the growing popularity and respectability of jazz music (Schuller, 1986). With this explosion of African Americans in Harlem came the influences of music, poetry, dance, and fashion. Underground nightclubs, dance halls, and speakeasies became popular for African Americans to entertain and express themselves alongside whites who became curious about this culture. One of the exchanges in these nightclubs was between white and black musicians (Gregory 2007). White people came to jazz clubs to listen and learn. They played these sounds in numbers that large crowds of young white people danced to throughout the city. White jazz bands paved the way for white audiences to begin appreciating new forms of music and the black artists who produced it. In the 1930s some African American gang leaders would work in the large dance halls. The Swing era also saw the first high-visibility integrated bands, including Artie Shaw with Billie Holiday. White musicians prevailed, but these interactions were changing the sounds and sociology of American music. Just as the Great Depression began, Holiday moved to Harlem where life was tough for Holiday and her mother. In her autobiography, Holiday states that "depression was nothing new to us, we always struggled with it." Before the Great Depression, the unemployment rate for African Americans had risen to around 50%. After the stock market crash in 1929, jobs disappeared or were filled by whites in need of work, making things more difficult for African Americans. Holiday and her mother worked in a Harlem brothel and were later arrested for prostitution (Holiday 2018). After serving in a workhouse, Holiday desperately searched for work and ended up auditioning at an underground speakeasy, unwittingly as a singer, where producer John Hammondhe would later notice her. Coupled with the need to find work during the Depression and the influence of jazz that traveled with the migration, we can see the effects this would have had on Holidays' career choice. Jazz music became a way for Holiday to support herself and her mother, but it would also become a way to express her troubled life. Embarking on her career while the Great Migration and the onset of the Great Depression were in effect, along with the mixing of blacks and whites in underground jazz clubs, would have created the perfect venue for Holiday's protest song "Strange Fruits." Before performing at Café Society (the first interracial nightclub), Holiday had just finished touring with Artie Shaw, where she became the first black woman to tour with an all-white orchestra. This would prove challenging due to Jim Crow. Holiday left the band because she was asked to take the freight elevator into a hotel where the band was having a concert. This was one of the many segregation laws that Holiday would encounter on the tour. The context in which Holiday's career developed is also seen in the racism she would encounter throughout her life. Although not an activist, Holiday was still acutely sensitive to the injustice suffered by African Americans. This is demonstrated in her performances of “Strange Fruit,” as Holiday called it a “protest song” and radically transformed her status in American popular culture. His performance in Strange Fruit firmly established his central role that directly addressed issues of racial injustice. Lewis Allen, a political activist, approached the Holiday at Café Society with his poem "Strange Fruits", Holiday mentions in his book "I knew it right away, it seemed to explain all the things that had killed Pop". Holiday's father had been exposed to mustard gas while serving in World War I. He fell ill while on tour in Texas and was refused treatment at a local hospital. By the time he was able to receive treatment in the Jim Crow ward of the Veterans Hospital, pneumonia had already set in and he died shortly thereafter (holiday 2018). Holiday attributed his death to unjustified racism, leading her to further connect with the lyrics of "Strange Fruit", an anti-lynching song. Lynchings in which blacks were hanged from trees and killed with unspeakable brutality, often in a carnival atmosphere, occurred rampantly in the South with the approval of local authorities after the Civil War and many years afterward. Lewis Allen learned of Holiday's father's death and became interested in having her sing Strange Fruits saying that "she would be the only person who could sing it" (Margolick 2000). While Holiday didn't go out of her way to protest racism, she came across this poem and immediately connected with the words. During the process of arranging the song, Holiday recalls in her book: "I worked like hell on it because I was never sure I could convey it, or that I could convey to the plush nightclub audience all the things it means to me" (Holiday 2018 ) I believe this demonstrates Billie Holiday's intention to consciously protest something she felt deeply about. Strange Fruits ended up being the most notable work of art of any lyric leaves the listener with chills , a realization and reality of what “black bodies swinging in the southern breeze” truly meant. Keep in mind: This is just one example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. ConclusionThroughout Holiday's career,. her gift of aesthetic communication has given her the ability to:. 2019].