Jazz, it is widely accepted, is the signal original American contribution to world culture. Angela Davis shows
us how the roots of that form in the blues must be viewed not only as a musical tradition but as a life-sustaining
vehicle for an alternative black working-class collective memory and social consciousness profoundly at odds with
mainstream American middle-class values. And she explains how the tradition of black women blues singers - represented
by Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday - embodies not only an artistic triumph and
aesthetic dominance over a hostile popular music industry but an unacknowledged proto-feminist consciousness within
working-class black communities. Through a close and riveting analysis of these artists' performances, words, and
lives, Davis uncovers the unmistakable assertion and uncompromising celebration of non-middle-class, non-heterosexual
social, moral, and sexual values.