If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday

by Farah Jasmine Griffin

More than four decades after her death, Billie Holiday remains one of the most gifted artists of our time–and also one of the most elusive. Because of who she was and how she chose to live her life, Lady Day has been the subject of both intense adoration and wildly distorted legends. Now at last, Farah Jasmine Griffin, a writer of intellectual authority and superb literary gifts, liberates Billie Holiday from the mythology that has obscured both her life and her art.

An intimate meditation on Holiday’s place in American culture and history, If You Can’t Be Free, Be A Mystery reveals Lady Day in all her complexity, humor and pain–a true jazz virtuoso whose passion and originality made every song she sang hers forever. Celebrated by poets, revered by recording artists from Frank Sinatra to Macy Gray, Billie Holiday is more popular and influential today than ever before. Now, thanks to this marvelous book, Holiday’s many fans can finally understand the singer and the woman they love.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography, Jazz, History, African American, Memoir

258 pages, Paperback

First published May 14, 2001

About the author

Farah Jasmine Griffin is a professor of English and comparative literature and African American Studies at Columbia University, where she has served as director of the Institute for Research in African American studies.

In addition to editing several collections of letters and essays she is the author of Who Set You Flowin’: The African American Migration Narrative (Oxford, 1995), If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday (Free Press, 2001) and Clawing At the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever (Thomas Dunne, 2008). She is also the editor of Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus (Knopf, 1999) co-editor, with Cheryl Fish, of Stranger in the Village: Two Centuries of African American Travel Writing (Beacon, 1998) and co-editor with Brent Edwards and Robert O’Meally of Uptown Conversations: The New Jazz Studies (Columbia University Press, 2004). Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Harper’s Bazaar, Callaloo, and African American Review, and she is also a frequent commentator on WNPR’s News & Notes.

Farah received her B.A. from Harvard (1985) and Ph.D.from Yale (1992). Professor Griffin’s major fields of interest are American and African American literature, music, history and politics. The recipient of numerous honors and awards for her teaching and scholarship, in 2006-2007 Professor Griffin was a fellow at the New York Public Library Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

Reviews

[Tanji Gilliam · Rating 5 out of 5]

music scholarship can be as vibrant and passionate as the cultures being studied.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title is taken from a 1989 poem by Rita Dove about Billie Holiday. I have listened in awe to her music carefully and continuously for 47-or-so-years. I have read other books about her life. I have seen the movie. This book tells her story more fully than any other biography I have read. And does so with style and respect, both for Lady Day and for the cultures in which she lived.....that is the culture of jazz and the culture of America during her too brief life. Here's one great quote: "Bille Holiday is the creation of Eleanora Fagan, that young, precocious Baltimore girl who decided first that she would not be a maid, and later that she did not want to be a whore. So she close the third option available to a black woman of her generation: singer. Furthermore, she picked her name, chose a personal style and dedicated her life to the development of her craft. She is a woman of her own creation."

[Megs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Using transcripts of interviews with Billie's contemporaries; friends and band mates and casual acquaintances Ms. Griffin paints a vivid picture of Lady Day showing the complexities of her life against the back drop of the era.
The writing shows her as a human being (as much as a legend) and through the eyes of those who knew her you see Ms. Holiday's fears, anger, love, violence and courage. It is a biography that gives the reader an opportunity to know more about Billie and determine for themselves who she might have been.

[Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three stars probably isn't fair because in so many ways this is a great book, an important and necessary one, that gets at the necessity of Billie Holiday's "culture of dissemblance" as a mode of self-protection. Griffin also delves into the ways the categories "black woman" and "genius" are held at arm's length. This is also a great book to teach because it covers a number of black feminist concerns in a very accessible manner. So why 3 stars? I wanted more. I wanted the discussions to be longer, arguments more fully realized and I thought at times the writing seemed a bit rushed and even flat. Maybe I'll change to 4 stars...

[Tasheika B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal woman always remembered for her gift of voice!

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A poetic study about Holiday's complicated legacy, written with great self-consciousness and affectionate by a lifelong Holiday devotee. At times, the discussions were maybe a bit too impressionistic for my academic tastes, but this is a lovely read.

[Mike Pollack · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t know much about the person Billie was, so the book was helpful and informative but I didn’t care for the way in which it was written.

[Kate LeBlanc · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was not what I was expecting. It read like a dissertation and packed a lot of information in without elaboration. I was hoping it would be more biographical and less argumentative. Griffin is clearly intelligent and passionate about Lady Day and jazz, but I felt like I was reading Griffin’s argument on why Billie Holiday is the Grandmother of Jazz. The book included a lot of analyses and debunking of other criticisms — all while littering the pages with obscure references (I kept a running list of authors and artists at the back to look up, read, and listen to). There was a lot of work and research involved in making this book, but it also required a lot of work to read it (as someone who likes jazz, but isn’t as knowledgeable as some). I’m a big fan of Billie Holiday already, so I wanted to know more about Lady Day, less about Griffin, and finally, I didn’t need to be convinced to like and respect the complexity of Billie Holiday. This was kind of a disappointment to be honest.

[Tim Sweeney · Rating 4 out of 5]

More insight on the great Billie Holiday from a lifelong, dedicated female scholar in Ms. Griffen. An analysis of previous biographies of the singer and mulit-facited woman whose virtues outside of her hypnotic-like, vocal transcendance were often hidden in limiting stereotypes.

Includes a close look at the biography and movie "Lady Sings the Blues".

Really enjoyed this relatively nuanced look which begs the wish that more of this type of work needs to be done.

[Kelly M Hunt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this when it was first written and announced in Ebony magazine. It seems it was written from a feminist perspective. I didn't agree with certain things in this book. But as I said it was written from the authors perspective and maybe that is why.

[Kalyrohey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great book about Billie Holiday and her legacy, and the position of the Black African-American woman in general. Even if you don't know the singer at first, this will make you want to.

[Aiden McDonough · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am sadly going to have the give this three stars. The facts are great, but it it basically almost autobiographical about the author herself.

[Joseph Hillyard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Farah Jasmine Griffin is a wonderful writer and dissects the legacy of Billie Holiday with the utmost care and nuance.

[Annie Garvey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hope Griffin writes a biography of Abbey Lincoln.

[Jae Alberi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written like a dry thesis paper, but interesting insights into Billie Holiday, as well as the history of music, feminism, racism and the archetypes we create.

[Christopher Heaney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a biography per se, but more of a rumination on Holiday's life, music & legacy.

[Doc · Rating 5 out of 5]

It would be a mistake to review Griffin's work as a biography because it's not. It's a cultural analysis of Billie Holiday's significance as a music and cultural icon, and the commodification of her image. Griffin's years of immersion in all things Holiday pays off nicely here. An analysis of Abbey Lincoln as the bearer of Holiday's legacy is an interesting and needed analysis.