Fiche notion "lieu et forme de pouvoir"

Fiche notion: "Place and form of powers"

I will talk about the notion of places and forms of power. Power is the ability to control someone, but usually leads to conflict between those who have power and those who do not. I chose to illustrate this notion with slavery in America through two documents, a song by Billie Holiday, from 1931 to first support an iconic singer and her influence, then as a second step, an ordinary slave song to support the idea of power that the song brings them, I choose the comic " I have blues " of Josh Cohen to answer this question, I answer the following key question " To what extent can we consider music to empower people ? ”

1. This song was released in the nineteen-thirties at a time period when saying what one thinks was not tolerated and allowed. There was a strict censorship and black people’s rights were not really clear. Segregation was still a truth and black people were not allowed to complain. Billie Holiday was a vocalist and a jazz diva. The words she used in her song are really strong and sad; her song is like a poem with a certain number of stylistic devices such as anaphors, repetitions, metaphors, flat rhymes, a gradient in the tone and meaning, alliterations and assonances. Everything is done to emphasize/insist on the tragedy of lynching.

In the song, a crime scene is presented in a beautiful and pastoral setting/landscape. This is a paradoxical and shocking situation. It is to make people react and to denounce the unfairness and the sordidness of these deeds.

In those days, black people were really weak and they could not express their ideas and they were not free. Thanks to music and singing, they managed to be free and influence their audience, music gave them power, Billie Holiday became an icon of jazz and a powerful woman.

1. An ordinary person who sings wants to express something through these words. See, sometimes they are people who have different styles of singing, everything will depend on their daily life, their way and way of life. I guess the title "I have blues" means that I feel depressed and sad. I believe that when you feel the blues you feel a kind of nostalgia, loneliness, melancholy and misunderstanding. But Blues is also a new musical style that blacks created at that time when they were working in cotton fields, and sugar cane. The blues was sung by black slaves. They sang to survive, to feel better and less sad. Songs and music had the power to help them survive, she was their most powerful tool.

Even in churches, they called it Negro Spiritual Indeed singing in Africa accompanies every moment of life. To be African is to have the sense of rhythm, improvisation and dialogue between soloist and choir, which are the characteristics of this music. Negro Spiritual has African roots. Blacks have heard whites singing, they have inspired themselves and created a new musical style, which, like all musical styles, is created from a mixture or revival of the past. But to this mix, they have assimilated biblical allusions, and this mixture of African sensitivity and music imported by the Europeans produces the creation of a new genre that will express the humanity of blacks in their oppression.

In a word, segregation is an unfair and undefined behavior of the white party. This will lead to justified revolt on the part of those blacks mistaken for a lower race in America. Nowadays, we are saying that blacks are free in America where there is a black president. But there is still progress to be made in this momentum.

Fiche notion : "Lieu et forme des pouvoirs"

Je parlerai de la notion de lieux et de formes de pouvoir. Le pouvoir est la capacité de contrôler quelqu'un, mais conduit généralement à un conflit entre ceux qui ont le pouvoir et ceux qui n'en ont pas. J’ai choisis d’illustrer cette notion de l'esclavage en Amérique à travers deux documents, une chanson de Billie Holiday, de 1931 à soutenir d'abord un chanteur emblématique et son influence, puis une deuxième étape, une chanson esclave ordinaire pour soutenir l'idée de qui je choisis La bande dessinée de Josh Cohen "I have blues" pour répondre à cette question, je réponds à la question clé suivante: "Comment pouvons-nous considérer la musique comme un moyen d'habiliter les gens?"

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