Examining Holiday through a highly critical and assessable lens, Griffin opens up conversations on music, race, gender, and Holiday to a broader audience then the confines of typical academic literature.
“This book is a result of [her] desire to write honestly and in a different voice about something that is as meaning to [her] spiritually and emotionally as it is intellectually” and through crafting an Afrocentric approach to her analysis, Griffin’s voice is a welcomed addition to the archive research and interviews she has conducted for this labor of love (p. 6). Though the subject manner and critical analysis of In Search Of Billie Holiday deserve praise in there own right, being a young scholar I am so inspired by Griffin’s writing technique that allowed for her voice to shine in addition to the cultural artifacts that she accumulated to build her
argument. With regards to the subject matter of In Search Of Billie Holiday, this case study of Holiday is an excellent epigraph of how to construct a critical piece of accessible scholarship. Griffin’s investigation into the nomer genius and Black women that opens her first chapter is an engaging topic that still deserves critical attention from scholars. As Griffin outlines, “few were willing to grant black women the title genius… All persons of African decent were thought to be unfit for advanced intellectual endeavors” (p. 14) Though Holiday is still not recognized as a universal musical genius, I think it is important that we explicitly define overarching terms, such as genius especially as we enter and engage within the current digital era. Genius is a fraught term and within music, vocalist are often gauged through judgments within “the European classical tradition – whether they can sing high and how long they can carry a note” (p. 188). Through this lens, African-based and Black-based musical traditions are located outside of the confines of a phenomenal vocalist. While both musical traditions are steeped in European classical traditions, they have built upon its legacy and transformed music not just into a practice of prolonged high notes, but of music that engages emotional and spiritual relationships between the performer, audience, and listener. “Musicking,” which seems to be an activity located in the Black diasporic traditions is thusly omitted from the confines of a genius and therefore the majority of Black cultural producers are excluded from the realm of genius. In addition to the racial implications of the word genius, it is apparent from the historiography of popular music, that the term musical genius has become synonymous with mostly White male performers excluding the contributions of their female counterparts. When one thinks of musical geniuses recognized by society, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, and Kurt Cobain are just a few of the White males who have found universal acceptance in the lineage of musical geniuses. While Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Louis Armstrong, Prince, and Jimi Hendrix, usually appear alongside their White counterparts, the overwhelming omittance of Black, other racial identified groups, and females from our understanding of musical geniuses reveals the heteronormative confines that the word genius has been constructed within. After all, a genius is someone embodying exceptional creative, intellectual, and original ability to an extent that is unprecedented within an individual. Through this lens, Billie Holiday who is a bench-marker for singing and phrasing should be included on a list of musical geniuses. In addition, the late Whitney Houston should be included on a list of musical geniuses as her ability to blend head and chest voices as well as her unparalleled control over her voice warrants her admittance. With that said, it appears though that musical genius has become a term synonymous with instrumental ability and the privileging of string, woodwind, brass, and percussion instruments over one’s the vocal instrument. If one is to say that Whitney Houston, Billie Holiday, or Aretha Franklin, to name a few, are vocal geniuses, I do not think there would be an issue, but the minute we term them musical geniuses, it appears as though the devaluing of vocal instrumentation becomes apparent as debates surrounding their musicality eventually enter into the argument. Oddly enough, Aretha Franklin on top of being a vocal innovator of the run and rift is a piano prodigy, who is often relegated solely to the microphone instead of recognized for her talents as both a vocal phenom and masterful pianist. Griffin’s deconstruction of myth and its impact on Holiday proved to be another fruitful site of academic advancement. While reading her sections on myth and Holiday, I could not help but allude her arguments to that of Whitney Houston and how the media are currently still in contention of constructing her legacy and trying to implement and maintain a tragic mulatto narrative similar to Holidays. Though family members and friends have spoken up against the narrative that Bobby Brown introduced Houston to drugs and the lifestyle that contributed to her ultimate passing, the media continues to reinforce the myth of Houston’s innocence being robbed by Brown, which not only crafts her as a victim, but denies Houston agency and culpability in making her own decisions as an adult woman. Just as with Holiday, “[t]here are images an myths that seem to swallow up individuals who are too complex to be explained by them, yet cannot escape their powerful hold” (p. 28). Holiday’s myth has constructed her as a superb talent that became consumed by drugs and failed relationships that ultimately lead to her death. Drug dealings, arrests, imprisonment, prostitution, and bad relationships, consumed to an extent the recognition of Holiday’s talent. While Griffin outlines how Holiday had a hand in crafting this tragic image (p. 51) that lead to the persona that engulfed her talent, I cannot help but wonder if Holiday believed that crafting this narrative would gain more critical praise for her work, or if she saw it as just an opportunity to cash in, as Griffin portrays. Having read excerpts of Angela Davis’ Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday, Griffin’s chapter on the politics of respectability offered more of a close read on Holiday and the different crafting of her narrative through Ebony and her rehearsal tapes that would eventually become commoditized like the rest of Holiday’s discography and image after her passing. Griffin calls for “an alternative [to the politics of respectability] that is aware of the workings of history and power that have defined us for the world, and to some degree for ourselves” (p. 94). The notion of a politics of respectability and an alternative are at the heart of my research on neo-soul and is predominately female artistry. Artists such as Jill Scott, India.Arie, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, and Angie Stone all (re)imagine, (re)define, (re)claim, and (re)present complex notions of Black womanhood and femininity that both challenge politics of respectability and the hegemonic structures that attempt to enforce a monolithic ideal of Black womanhood. In the end, Griffin offers a work that is diverse in critical analysis and filled with a detailed understanding of Holiday that ranges from the aforementioned topics to those of her reception in Europe, the politics of Black musical performance (Baraka vs. Ellison), the commoditization of her image and music in contemporary society, and her legacy through Abbey Lincoln. Billie Holiday like other great Black artists had the ability “to tap into a collective sensibility that characterizes much of black in America art: the beauty born form the pain and joy of being black in America” (174). Though she has been canonized due to her pain and sorrow, Griffin excavates some of the joy found in Holidays life and helps construct a more complex understanding of the iconic Holiday that steams far beyond the constrains of a tragic drug addicted highly talented vocalist. The ultimate tragedy in In Search Of Billie Holiday: If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery is that “too many contemporary artists (especially those who are commercially successful) have failed to study the lives of the ancestors, failed to heed the wise advice of the elders, and instead of constructing a new narrative for black artists, they have fallen prey to the traps that ensnared those who come before them” (190). Hopefully more artists will invest in understanding the legacy in which they are cut from and In Search Of Billie Holiday is a great place to start.