Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

this is one of my favorite Billie Holiday tunes
(remember that this was recorded before the women's rights movement)
I think it represents the heavy irony of the blues


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what do 2009 girls think about this?

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i think they're nice videos

thanks for sharing

we have a video forum, btw.

I was using these tunes to start a discussion about how the idea of women's rights has changed since Billie did these tunes. Both of them speak about spousal abuse.

(plus I just felt like playing Billie Holiday....haha)

"he beats me too, what can i do?"

pretty fricking sad.. that's what i think of it

but i don't think the times have changed in that respect

there are women who really don't know how to get up and leave

then and now

that's the sad part

it's not like the lyrics are saying it's acceptable to get beaten up... that you have to just live with it

that's not what it says

I said, 'the heavy irony of the blues'

I think those tunes are activist songs for women in violent relationships

much of the blues displays this type of irony

it's about talking 'bout massa behind his back right in front of his face

what's a "massa"?

'massa' is slave dialect for 'master'

the word 'boss' is similar. The slave master thinks it's a term of respect when it's really a term of derision. It's a dismissive term in some African languages.

anyway, here's another Billie tune that I love

(cheesy orchestration in this version)

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She wasn't singing about being a slave. She was singing about her "man" ..... her lover, not her master.

(though i'm using the word "lover" loosely as he obviously doesn't love her if he beats her up)

I'm with doreen. like all the way.

i hate to sound like a dickish feminist but there are somethings, namely physical abuse that a white heterosexual man would be hard pressed to understand or speak about.

like white "beatniks" talking about jazz and poverty and the blues, sometimes i wonder if they were caught up in some false placed celebration of it, because they actually were privledged little white boys.

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Boy this reply did not come out as planned. It was going to be long digression on the subject feminism and Freud’s The Economy of Masochism.
http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=psar.030.0417a



I was going to have scholarly quotes from feminists around the world who are still interested in Freud. I cannot for the life of me understand why Bracha Lichtenberg-Ettinger is still interested in Freud. She in seeking the possibility of a non-phallic understanding of masculinity

But I got lazy and posted that macho song instead.

Thank you all for the beautiful music.

It is all Greek to me.

I used to go to the Left Bank Jazz Society club in baltimore. I would be rapt in the music and all of a sudden everyone would start clapping, and shouting and I would be startled because I did not have a clue as to what I was hearing. I just liked the sound it made.

Speaking of Greek
How can the tragic be beautiful.

I really enjoyed listening to those numbers
sincerely
jt

women's rights wasn't the only area of Lady Day's musical activism

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