Thesis submission ID 776 | created
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Joan Shields, 'Deep Song': Singing from the Margins. Billie Holiday's Style and its Location within Jazz
Volumes, pp.: 1 (45pp)
Supervisor(s): Dr Philip Graydon
Repository (hard copy): DIT Conservatory of Music & Drama Library
General specialism: Musicology: Performance Studies
Abstract:
Billie Holiday stands today as one of the most iconic figures in Jazz History - her image and voice are instantly recognisable to millions as the veritable embodiment of Jazz vocal music. However, in many respects, she remains an ambiguous, paradoxical and often misunderstood figure. She is frequently cited as one of the greatest and most influential jazz vocalists of all time, yet she remained a marginalised talent in her lifetime, never achieving the mainstream stardom and success she craved. It is unfortunate that her posthumous fame owes more to the sensationalism and tragedy of her final years (and the fictionalised 1972 biopic 'Lady Sings the Blues'), than it does to her music. Her true artistic legacy remains obscured by a reductionist view of her as a 'professional sufferer' and torch singer of sombre ballads. Even within the ambit of Jazz criticism, history and musicology, where Holiday is acknowledged, it tends to be as a peripheral figure in its canon; or she is, at best, ghettoised as an important influence solely on vocalists. This is not surprising, as she also personifies that most paradoxical figure - the singer - at once highly visable; yet marginalised, within Jazz.
This study aims to re-assess Billie Holiday as a musicians and, in particular, her style and achievements in a bid to locate her faithfully within the chronicle of Jazz music history. It investigates the context from which she emerged and how historical conditions - musical, technological and social - contributed to the development of her talent. It traces her influences and analyses how she incorporated key characteristics of these influences into the formation of an individual approach. It examines Holiday as a musician working within the strictures and against the prejudices of a mole-oriented envoronment and how she harnessed these constraints to become a true innovator. Finally, it suggests reasons why her full contribution may be overlooked and why she may pose a troubling figure for what is essentially, a male instrumentalist-dominated discourse.
Joan Shields, 'Deep Song': Singing from the Margins. Billie Holiday's Style and its Location within Jazz
Other, Dublin Institute of Technology, 2013
Volumes, pp.: 1 (45pp)
Supervisor(s): Dr Philip Graydon
Repository (hard copy): DIT Conservatory of Music & Drama Library
General specialism: Musicology: Performance Studies
Abstract:
Billie Holiday stands today as one of the most iconic figures in Jazz History - her image and voice are instantly recognisable to millions as the veritable embodiment of Jazz vocal music. However, in many respects, she remains an ambiguous, paradoxical and often misunderstood figure. She is frequently cited as one of the greatest and most influential jazz vocalists of all time, yet she remained a marginalised talent in her lifetime, never achieving the mainstream stardom and success she craved. It is unfortunate that her posthumous fame owes more to the sensationalism and tragedy of her final years (and the fictionalised 1972 biopic 'Lady Sings the Blues'), than it does to her music. Her true artistic legacy remains obscured by a reductionist view of her as a 'professional sufferer' and torch singer of sombre ballads. Even within the ambit of Jazz criticism, history and musicology, where Holiday is acknowledged, it tends to be as a peripheral figure in its canon; or she is, at best, ghettoised as an important influence solely on vocalists. This is not surprising, as she also personifies that most paradoxical figure - the singer - at once highly visable; yet marginalised, within Jazz.
This study aims to re-assess Billie Holiday as a musicians and, in particular, her style and achievements in a bid to locate her faithfully within the chronicle of Jazz music history. It investigates the context from which she emerged and how historical conditions - musical, technological and social - contributed to the development of her talent. It traces her influences and analyses how she incorporated key characteristics of these influences into the formation of an individual approach. It examines Holiday as a musician working within the strictures and against the prejudices of a mole-oriented envoronment and how she harnessed these constraints to become a true innovator. Finally, it suggests reasons why her full contribution may be overlooked and why she may pose a troubling figure for what is essentially, a male instrumentalist-dominated discourse.
Thesis submission ID 776