“Nothing was more perfect than
what she was. Nor more willing to fail.
(If we call failure something light can
realize. Once you have seen it, or felt
whatever thing she conjured growing
in your flesh.)
At the point where what she did
left singing, you were on your own. At
the point where what she was was in
her voice, you listen and make your
own promises.
More than I have felt to say, she
says always. More than she has ever
felt is what we mean by fantasy.
Emotion, is wherever you are. She
stayed in the street.
The myth of blues is dragged from
people. Though some others make categories
no one understands. A man
told me Billie Holiday wasn’t singing
the blues, and he knew. O.K., but what
I ask myself is what had she seen to
shape her singing so? What in her life,
proposed such tragedy, such final
hopeless agony? Or flip the coin and
she is singing, “Miss Brown to You.”
And none of your cats would dare
cross her. One eye closed, and her
arms held in such balance, as if all
women were so aloof. Or could laugh
so.
And even in the laughter, something
other than brightness, completed
the sound. A voice that grew from
singer’s instrument to a woman’s. And
from that (those last records critics say
are weak) to a black landscape of need,
and perhaps, suffocated desire.
Sometimes you are afraid to listen
to this lady.”
Amiri Baraka, ‘Dark Lady of the Sonnets’ from “Black Music,” 1968
ModPo 