Swing/Jazz, Billie Holiday

Swing music has origin in New Orleans and developed with African American artists such as Billie Holiday(1915-1959), Cab Calloway(1907-1994).

Some people say that jazz united the human race. Black music was still under discrimination back in 20’s. It gradually began to be embraced by the public as radio programmes began to play them in the mid 30’s. Young people who were depressed with the world after the war became interested in jazz music and they enjoyed spending time dancing to it.

At first, Jazz was popular in Central America, and finally its popularity grew throughout the U.S..

As I stated above, Billie Holiday is one of the most influential and biggest jazz artists in 20^th century. Though she’s already dead, she’s still big and her life is controversial. She was born in 1915 in Baltimore, the United States and died at the age of 44. She is famous for her hit songs “God Bless the Child”, “Lady Sings The Blues” “Easy Living” and many other songs.

In her short life, she went through many hardships such as racial discrimination, drug addict, and alcohol addict. Despite her devastated life, her voice was like nobody else, it was unique and special enough to keep inspiring people and many artists. Frank Sinatra, Diana Ross, Macy Grey, they are a few examples of artists who stated that they were inspired by her. Also U2 released the song called “Angel of Harlem” in 1987, which was a tribute to Billie.

It is no exaggeration to say that she made a great contribution to betterment of black discrimination.