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Posts tagged as “Farah Jasmine Griffin”

Lady Writes The Blues: Billie Holiday’s Singing and Songwriting Artistry (LISTEN)

Lady Writes The Blues: Billie Holiday’s Singing and Songwriting Artistry (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on April 19, 2022

[Billie Holiday, from March 23, 1949. Photographer: Carl Van Vechten. from the Yale University Archives at Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library]

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

In continued celebration of #JazzAppreciationMonth, today we drop in on Billie Holiday, the singer and artist who not only influenced peers and progeny alike with her innovative interpretation of and phrasing in songs, but also composed several of her signature songs which became jazz and blues standards in the decades that followed.

To read about Holiday, read on. To hear about her, press PLAY:

[You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website. Full transcript below]:

Hey, this is Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Tuesday, April 19th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.

Billie Holiday famously said she styled her singing after two major influences – blues empress Bessie Smith and jazz trumpeter and legend Louis Armstrong.

The alchemy Holiday found by combining her favorites inspired many of her contemporaries as well as subsequent generations of singers, who were impressed with her pioneering phrasing and improvisation.

What is less often praised about Holiday is her songwriting skill. She wrote several signature songs that are now standards. Let’s start with “Fine and Mellow,” which Holiday first recorded in 1939:

[Excerpt of “Fine and Mellow”]

Professor Farah Jasmine Griffin to Chair Columbia University’s Newly-Created African American and African Diaspora Studies Department

By goodblacknews on December 30, 2018
Professor Farah Jasmine Griffin (photo via goodreads.com)

via jbhe.com

The Columbia University board of trustees recently approved the creation of a new African American and African Diaspora Studies Department. Professor Farah Jasmine Griffin, the William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African American Studies, has been appointed as the chair of the new department.

“Now, more than ever, we need to have both an understanding of that history, but we also need to understand the ways that history contributes to a sense of possibility and vision for the future,”said Dr. Griffin. “Even though we are later than many of our peers, the creation of this department at Columbia is right on time because our nation and our world need the kind of knowledge we produce.”

In 1993, long before there was a centralized department for African studies, Dr. Manning Marable established the Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS) at Columbia. The institute has brought together scholars from a variety of disciplines and continues to bridge scholarship, teaching, and public life. Once the new department has been created, the IRAAS will continue to conduct research.

Now that the department has been approved, Columbia plans to hire new faculty who are experts in the field of African American and African diaspora studies and create a Ph.D. program to produce additional innovative scholarship.

Additionally, the school recognizes the significance of being located in Harlem, a center of Black cultural life in the United States, and plans to collaborate with the surrounding community.

“Departments and academic institutions don’t produce knowledge for the moment, they produce knowledge for the long term,” said Dr. Griffin, who also serves as director of the IRAAS. “Creating a new department is an investment in producing knowledge that is valuable for our country at any time, but especially at this moment, as it reminds us of a historical legacy as well as a vision of America that we need to engage more now than ever.”

Dr. Griffin holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, a Ph.D. from Yale University, and has authored several books including “Who Set You Flowin’?”: The African-American Migration Narrative (Race and American Culture), and If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday.

Source: https://www.jbhe.com/2018/12/columbia-university-approves-an-african-american-and-african-diaspora-studies-department/