Summertime

Billie Holiday's "Summertime" does something that requires enormous courage in interpretation: she slows George Gershwin's already-languid lullaby almost to stillness, and in that stillness finds something deeply, specifically sorrowful. The original song is a white Southern fantasy of Black rural life — beautiful and patronizing in equal measure — but Holiday's version reclaims the sorrow the lyric contains and expands it into something truer. The arrangement barely moves, guitar and piano laying down the lightest possible harmonic foundation, as if too much sound would disturb what the voice is doing. Holiday's tone in this period is extraordinary: a slight roughness at the edges, a catch in certain syllables, vibrato that sounds involuntary rather than decorative. She does not ornament the melody — she inhabits it, following its contours with the patience of someone who has nowhere else to be and nothing to prove. The lyric promises safety and plenty to a child, and Holiday renders that promise knowing it may not be kept, which gives every reassurance a quality of ache. This is not a lullaby that will help you sleep; it is a lullaby that tells the truth about the world while still trying, against all odds, to offer comfort. It is music for the hours before dawn when you are awake without wanting to be, holding something tender and fragile and uncertain about whether it will survive.