Even though they were released during different decades, the films Ray and Lady Sings The Blues, have many things in common: they are both about musicians (Ray Charles and Billie Holiday), both their main characters are African American, they were both present at the Academy Awards (Diana Ross was nominated for her performance as Billie in the Best Actress category, and Jamie Foxx won the Best Actor award for his portrayal of Ray), both lead characters suffer from addiction to narcotics, and both Billie and Ray are impacted by two life-changing deaths (the death of Billie’s pianist, as well as that of Ray’s brother George). However, one of the most important things that both films have in common is racial injustice.
Lady Sings The Blues takes place in the 1930’s and 1940’s, when the lynching of African-Americans in the southern states of the United States was common. Billie Holiday is shocked by this, especially in three scenes: the first one is when, during a tour, Billie asks her bus driver to stop for a minute. Billie gets off the bus to admire the pretty trees, a view that eventually leads to a shocking image as Billie sees fellow African Americans being hung from those trees, inspiring her to record one of her most important songs, “Strange Fruit”, whose lyrics say: “Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees (…)” (Allen 43), in which the ‘fruit’ that hangs from the trees is obviously the African-American people of the southern states of the US.
Another shocking moment comes when the Ku Klux clan attacks the tour bus that belongs to Billie’s band, a band founded by white musicians, in which she is the only African American. Billie’s band mates try to protect her and they ask her to hide for her own safety, however, Billie refuses to do so by cursing the clan desperately, yet face to face.
The final moment of this film in which Billie is a direct victim of racial injustice, comes when she and her band are asked to appear in a live radio program sponsored by Sunray Soap, a company that promotes ‘white’ and clean hands, and therefore the band appears, but Billie does not meet the sponsor’s target due to her color, so therefore, she never performs on the show. This is a direct example of how racial injustice affects Billie Holiday’s work opportunities in Lady Sings The Blues, something to which Ray Charles is a direct challenge in Ray.
Sometime in the early sixties, Ray Charles, an African-American who managed to have success on both white and African American radio, is scheduled to perform at a concert for a segregated audience in Georgia, where the Jim Crow laws are still in function. Ray only learns about the segregated organization of the event upon his arrival at the venue that same day, due to a protesting fellow African American, who asks him not to perform that night. At first, Ray refuses, but not before long, he changes his mind, gets back into his tour bus and leaves the state of Georgia, from which he is legally forbidden until 1979, when the Jim Crow laws are no longer functioning and the state offers him a public apology, welcomes him back, and makes his song “Georgia On My Mind”, its official state song. This shows how Ray Charles is a direct challenge to racial injustice, as he refuses to perform before an official entity which supports this issue, for this same entity to admit that prohibiting him is a mistake years later.
Because of the previous reasons, we can affirm that racial injustice is one of the most important factors in both Ray and Lady Sings The Blues, leading us to the following conclusion: even though they lived during different times and performed different genres, one thing is for certain: Billie Holiday and Ray Charles sang the same blues.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1) Allen, Lewis. "Billie Holiday Strange Fruit lyrics." Lyrics Freak. 15 Sep 2008 http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/billie+holiday/strange+fruit_20017859.html.
Copyright 2008 (renovado en 2009), Emilio Sánchez Enterprises Inc.
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