Words and Songs of Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone: Sound Motion, Blues Spirit, and African Memory

by Bratcher; Melanie E.

• ISBN13: 9780415980296
• ISBN10: 0415980291
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-06-15
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book explores the relationship between three African American women's dance-art-music sensibilities within the context of a Pan African aesthetic. Its purpose is three-fold: to show commonalities between Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone's lives and original compositions; to codify, examine and evaluate their selected song performances in accordance with the Pan African aesthetic "Nzuri theory/model;" and to illuminate the vast sources of transformational values that aesthetic analysis of African American song performance can foster. Following concordant procedures and principles of Afrocentricity, the study focuses on Smith, Holiday and Simone's performances as part of a whole African artistic and cultural value system. The goal of the Afrocentric methodological structure is to locate relevant African dynamics in songs and to promote knowledge for cultural transformation and continuity. Its use in this study provides meta-criteria for analyzing African American music, which the authorhas used to uniquely argue connections between African cultural memory and African-derived cultural expression.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. vii
Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
Introduction	p. 1
Catching the Blues Spirit	p. 13
Musing African Memory	p. 25
Three Women	p. 49
Sound Motion and Spirit	p. 87
Summary and Conclusion	p. 133
Discography	p. 141
Life Profile Matrix	p. 145
Life Profile Matrix: Analytical Categories Quantified per Singer	p. 155
Life Profile Matrix: Analytical Categories Thematically Qualified	p. 159
Life Profile/Song Matrices	p. 163
Discography of Selected Song Performances on CD	p. 169
Selected Songs/Prevalent Themes Matrices	p. 171
Explanation of Nzuri Model Contexts	p. 183
Application of Nzuri to Selected Song Performances	p. 187
Permissions	p. 205
Notes	p. 209
Bibliography	p. 223
Glossary	p. 241
Suggested Readings	p. 251
Index	p. 255
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