publications from between

Revisiting

Lady Day:Lady Day: Nass Recommends the Billie Holiday Catalogue

many of those contemporaries I’ve named. No, Billie Holiday is decidedly not as attractive in this sense. But at least her voice is pleasant, right?

All told, Billie Holiday’s vocal style is actually rather thin and somewhat raspy. And when it is raspy, it’s not like Armstrong, whose rasp is all-encompassing and charming. Instead, Holiday’s rasp more often betrays a vocal deficit, alarming her more careful listeners. This deficiency is most evident in her later recordings. I am of course not arguing that Billie is a bad vocalist; her talent is indisputable. But she perhaps doesn’t occupy the same category as someone like Ella Fitzgerald or Etta James, whose vocal power and control are so extraordinary that it can be overwhelming. No, Billie Holiday’s talent manifests subtly.

That subtlety doesn’t just reside in her vocal technique, though. It’s an emotional subtlety that permeates the very essence of any of her recordings. Sure, it’s reflected in the way she manipulates her voice, but it’s technique that she manipulates to suggest emotion. Instead, she dives into the wells of her emotion to inform her technique or lack thereof. Ray Ellis, orchestrator and conductor for her penultimate album Lady in Satin, agreed: “I would say that the most emotional moment was her listening to the playback of "I'm a Fool to Want You." There were tears in her eyes... After we finished the album I went into the control room and listened to all the takes. I must admit I was unhappy with her performance, but I was just listening musically instead of emotionally. It wasn't until I heard the final mix a few weeks later that I realized how great her performance really was.”

The aspects of her artistry that make her slightly less accessible than other household name jazz vocalists are exactly the reason so many other jazz fans, me included, love her so much. Billie Holiday reflects the softer, more intentional side of jazz often lost in even the best of Ella Fitzgerald or Nat Cole. Holiday’s catalogue exhibits levels of sophistication, depth, and maturity that transcend any analyses of vocal tone or technique. In honor of Womxn’s History month, let’s celebrate the great Billie Holiday. There’s a reason Frank O’Hara was so moved by her death that he felt compelled to write his iconic poetic tribute. Beyond the crooning Sinatra or the crackly Armstrong or the suave Martin, let’s remember Billie Holiday, the singer who understood that jazz, that music, is about conveying the totality of one’s emotion in ways that otherwise cannot be done.

A R e f e c t i o n o n R e p r o d u c t i v e R i g h t s a t P r i n c e t o n

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God into the reader), but hon- estly there’s no point.

And there really is no point because we have no shared vocabulary. In most other di- alogues, there are some com- mon starting points or foun- dational principles that both sides can refer to. For example, when discussing guns, wheth- er you are for or against guns, you can ground your opinion in some constitutional stipula- tion. In discussions about birth control, people approach the topic from two disparate stand- points: one secular and the other religious. This makes di- alogues about womxn’s sexual health and reproductive rights incredibly frustrating because we are stuck.

Compromise seems out of reach, but groups like PSRJ will never stop trying to provide womxn who seek sexual health products with access to these products. These vending ma- chines will provide womxn who want personal lubricant, a UTI detection kit, condoms, and or Plan-B with these products. Obviously, no one who does not need or desire these products will have to buy or see them because the vending machines will be placed in discreet loca- tions in an effort to maintain the privacy of the purchasing party.

Right now, PSRJ is setting up a time for Vengo Labs to come to Princeton and determine whether the locations we have selected for the vending ma- chines are feasible. We are also reaching out to various fund- ing groups to see if the items in the vending machine can be partially subsidized if not com- pletely free. I hope that, by the end of the year if not sooner, Princeton students will have stress-free access to Plan-B and these other sexual health products.

The Nassau Weekly can only imagine the blood, sweat, and tears that went into Isabelle Ca- simir’s twelve paragraphs.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6

from her role in a company, her role as a wife, and her role as a mother. Stone’s quick pacing of these realizations doesn’t give Anna or the audience time to process fully what it means to have one’s roles torn away. This is a question that requires the rest of the play to be explored. However, the speed of this opening sequence does augment the sense of pathos felt for Anna as she pleads for Lucas and the children to stay with her, and for there to be a negotiation about her custody of the children. Yet, amidst these early realizations Anna is calm and strangely composed, insisting that she’s “fine.” The tone of her voice, and strained face that the camera focuses in on reveals a determination—or perhaps a desperation. From the first moment that Anna says “I’m fine” the word becomes a kind of mask—a means of keeping up appearances in her home and in society.

This mask, this semblance of being “fine,” is nonetheless difficult to sustain. In one scene, Anna is running around the stage, enthusiastically trying to show her children and husband just how “fine” she is. A few scenes later, though, her two sons find her passed out, hungover, unable to bring them to school, unable to mother them. Scenes between Medea and her children aren’t in Euripides’ version of the tale,

but Stone is eager to explore how “the pressure of motherhood on a successful, highly intelligent woman” can manifest itself. Anna’s mothering can in fact feel closer to intelligent manipulation. For example, as the children complain about their father’s cooking, she cleverly offers them takeout and other food to try and win their favor. It’s hard not to immediately criticize Anna’s attempts to use fast food to manipulate her children. But, immediately one might question this critical perspective on Anna’s actions. Afterall, she is feeding her children, and perhaps our judgement in fact stems from preconceived notions of gender in which the mother doesn’t just buy a pizza to nourish her family, but instead spends hours preparing a meal that somehow pleases the tastes of her husband and her children. The moments of motherhood that Stone presents are complex. Anna seems desperate in moments to take care of children, inspiring the audience’s pathos, but her actions invoke criticism of her mothering. Such pathos and criticism—or bias—are thus placed at odds with one another.

It would be wrong to glaze over the strong presence of the children of this adaptation, as they pose their own intriguing set of challenges. While in Euripides’ Medea one does not hear from the children or even see them, in this production they run around, invading

Masks and Motherhood

Reflections on Simon Stone’s Medea

spaces with their camera. As the camera zooms in on the quivering lip of their mother, or the exhausted eyes of their father, one can’t help but question whether this camera is also providing a perspective on how the children can see their parents. But the camera isn’t just a lens, it’s an object of direction and pressure. By knowing the documentary the children are making is for class, the parents are pressured to behave in particular ways—literally to smile for the camera. This camera also reveals a manipulative streak in the children as they use clips of their mother and father to try and disrupt the relationship between them. Perhaps their actions stem from a loyalty to their scorned mother; perhaps they are a warning about poor parenting. However, their cunningness also seems to signal a more concerning consideration about how character traits might be passed on through generations. The children may have inherited their mother’s intelligence, but that genius also has a dangerous potential. By the end of Medea, the clinically white void of a stage is stained by ash and blood. It’s as if the experiment in the laboratory of the stage has gone terribly wrong, but it’s also been effective. Is this for Stone the product of “the epidemic of female energy being used behind the scenes and then not being credited. Female genius and female sacrifice?” It’s a dramatic product in more ways than one,

but it’s also horribly inspired by true events. Stone revealed Debora Green—a doctor that burned down her house with her children inside it and killed her husband’s mistress—to be a real-life inspiration. Yet, Stone’s production doesn’t let one see Anna as just the evil murderess. He forces the audience to finally acknowledge her genius, her determination, even her love. The Medea of Stone’s production is strong against the weakened, disheveled, and lecherous Jason. The tragedy of the play doesn’t just reside in the deaths, but also in the question of “how did we get here?” Stone speaks frequently about the value of forcing a classic into the modern age. He demands us to think about how and why these myths are still so important in today’s society and in what ways the audience is responsible for prolonging the tragedies of people surrounding them. The production is a hard medicine to swallow while in the theatre, but its aftertaste also rightfully remains long after one has stopped looking directly at the stage.

Mika Hyman seems desperate in moments to take care of the Nassau Weekly but her actions invoke criticism of her mothering.

Mama

They just kept coming. Eight daughters. They stopped trying her; he gave up. They would argue for the rest of their marriage how far stop was from give. My mother was second, raised Australian, lowered American. Swam for her life.

Florida, oxidized green, obliged her on this point, rising out of the pool into its mildew. She ruined a hip. Sifted between colleges. I wasn’t alive. For all I know she ran off with a Kennedy before killing him.

Did a good bit of running. Further conjecture (all poetry)— I needn’t beg you to imagine my mother. She was never a metaphor until we just kept coming. Flew a thousand miles to see me for an hour a day under nurse supervision. Only those gone or left fit in stanzas. I have the privilege to be barred from poetry. She saves every room she fills, and she is a woman who pours.

by ANDREW ZACKS

1. Fragment Av En Midsommarnattsdröm - Enhet För Fri Musik - Enhet För Fri Musik. (2019) This is a 2017 compilation album by the experimental Swedish collective Enhet För Fri Musik, reissued in 2019 on Grapefruit due to limited distribution in the US. listening to this is kinda like falling asleep on the toilet at your aunt’s house: you’ll open your eyes filled with intense existential dread in a deep dissociative state, and you’re not quite sure why your dick is out.

2. Apple MO16 - Taeha Types - ASMR: Recordings of Typing on Bespoke and Luxury Keyboards (2019) A bit more opaque than something as approachable as the HHKB Pro, but the MO16 is definitely worth checking out. not to be that guy, but this album reaffirms that apple’s newer offerings just can’t hold up to their early work.

3. uncertain loop no 20190511 - Xuan Ye - Xi Xi (2019) A worthwhile listen for fans of bieber, bruno mars, and their ilk.

4. Dandou Kodjo - Akofa Akoussah - Akofa Akoussah (2019) Recently unearthed togolese deep soul cut, reissued on light in the attic in 2019. pleasant enough, good for the folks at home.

5. Overdoser - Seungmin Cha - nuunmuun (2019) Ungh ungh neon hunk neon hunk

WPRB Student Shows

Monday 6-9a - Max’s Relaxers w/ Max - Maximilian Eggl 9-11a - This is Not a Drill w/ tommy - Thomas Sachen 5-6p - New Music Hour w/ ameena - Ameena Faruki 6-8p - Crash Landing w/ Michael - Michael Hill-Oliva 11p-1a - rewire w/ chaotic neutral - Jon Garaffa

Tuesday 7-9a - Beats with B w/ DJ B - Briana Macedo 11a-2p - The Name of This Show is Elliot on WPRB - Elliot Wilson 2-5p - Keepin’ It Cool w/ DJ AC (every other week) - Alia Bradley 5-6p - Rounding the Bases w/ David - David Loughran 6-8p - RadioActivity w/ Abbie from Mars - Abbie Minard 11p-1a - The Litterbox w/ Kat - Katherine Graham

Wednesday 11p-1a - big bops w/ Sammy G - Sam Grayson

Thursday 8-11p - HEAVEN IS HOT LIKE THE TROPICS w/ ameena - Ameena Faruki 11p-1a - Shadowplay w/ Rod - Rod Eric Joseph

Friday 6-9a - leafy green space w/ leafy - Ezra Levy 9-11a - Blues, Off the Record w/ Sonny Boy Williamson III - William Dingee 2-5p - mixed signal w/ tanya - Tanya Brailovskaya 5-6p - News and Culture - Oliver Whang

Saturday 5-7p - The Quarter-Life Crisis w/ Aatmik - Aatmik Gupta 7-10p - Learn How to Knit w/ David - David Borts 1-3a - There Was a Lull in Conversation w/ DJ Lili - Iris Ushizima Sabino

Sunday 7-9a - Over Easy w/ clio - Sara Ryave 11a-2p - the Uncertain hour(s) w/ Violet - Hanna Szabo 5-7p - Weird, Old America w/ Dylan Fox - Dylan Fox 10p-1a - Corn on the Coby w/ Coby - Coby Goldberg (every other week alternating) booty call w/ glenna jane - Glenna Jane Galarion