Billie Holiday on the constraints of friendship and a lived ideal

Angela Davis argues that Billie Holiday's music retains an “undiminished appeal” across generations because it can simultaneously “confirm and subvert racist and sexist representations of women” in romantic love. In this article, Davis's argument is extended through an examination of Holiday's narratives about and lived experience with a different kind of love: friendship. Friendship is detailed first as an ideal in the aesthetic partnership Holiday shared with tenor saxophonist Lester Young. Then, friendship's constraints are considered through Holiday's narratives about connections she made in childhood and with Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Orson Welles. Where Holiday's love songs highlight the confines of sexism and racism, her reflections on friendship include classism and sexuality, and thereby provide insight into the ways intersectionality works to squeeze the potential for freedom and shared growth by coalescing around the identities that are either had by, or presumed of, those who share the friendship.