How Did Billie Holiday Influence The Harlem Renaissance

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There were many influential musicians of the Harlem Renaissance, yet Billie Holiday stands out as a sincere artist with a style all her own. While many artists used the scat singing characteristic to jazz vocals, Holiday rarely sang the gibberish words and instead focused on the meaning of the song through her intense yet quiet voice. Despite the common Tin Pan Alley technique of plugging out songs simply to promote the sheet music, Holiday explored improvisation and made each song her own. Through her jazz improvisation, sincerity, and manipulation of phrasing, Billie Holiday created a revolutionary style of singing that many musicians copied in years to come.
Holiday’s childhood was riddled with abuse and poverty, yet it largely shaped her musical career. When her mother worked as a prostitute, Holiday ran errands for the girls in the nearby brothel in return …show more content…
The poem was highly controversial in the 1930’s due to its theme of civil rights and its ironic verses, comparing fruit hanging from poplar trees in the “gallant South” to “black bodies swaying in the breeze” (Morgenstern 257). She lags behind the accompanying piano, creating a tension between her and the audience. It causes listeners to wonder if she’ll fall completely off beat, but she never does, implementing the improvisational aspect of jazz (Baird 2). Thus, Holiday makes her audience listen closely, but still retains an air of mystery. Also, she sings in a hushed tone most of the song which increases the emotional impact on the listener. Instead of a shouted slogan, the quiet intensity draws much more attention to the words and their significance. This also magnifies the phrases in which she does sing above a mezzo forte, making them ring out with power. Holiday’s performance of this song drew attention as one of the first civil rights songs and it was largely due to her dramatic delivery (Morgenstern
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