Professor Farah Jasmine Griffin

When Ken Burns' 10-part documentary, "Jazz," began airing in mid-January, it brought to life Harlem's storied contributions to both the music genre and American history. In the 1920s, Harlem's Cotton Club featured some of the world's most famous musicians, such as Duke Ellington and Count Basie.

But perhaps the one artist of the period who remains at the forefront of contemporary American commercial culture is Billie Holiday.

"Billie Holiday represents a hipness of today, which is why her music is being played at coffee shops and bookstores," said Columbia English Professor Farah Jasmine Griffin. "She became and remains an icon, bringing her to the attention of people who otherwise wouldn't have heard of her."

Griffin's observations are based on her research for If You Can't Be Free, Be A Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday, which will be published this spring by the Free Press.

"It's an autobiographical meditation on Billie Holiday as an icon," said Griffin. "My image of her was very important to my development as an intellectual and individual."

English Professor Robert O'Meally, director of Columbia's Center for Jazz Studies, wrote a biography on Holiday, Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday (Arcade), which was published in 1991.

To better understand how Holiday has achieved icon status in the United States, Griffin explored both the myths and realities of the singer's life.

"In writing the book, I learned even more about the myths surrounding her life that the mainstream media, musicians and even Billie Holiday constructed—the tragic woman who was unlucky in love, for instance," Griffin said.

Holiday died in 1959 in a New York City hospital, where she was arrested for alleged heroin possession on what turned out to be her deathbed. Her death resulted from of a series of ailments brought about by drug abuse.

"These myths about Billie Holiday are based on a reality, but they have taken on a existence of their own and have overshadowed other parts of her life."

For instance, Holiday was a pioneer on social issues, often confronting, through her music, the nation's racial violence. Her 1939 "Strange Fruit" was an attack on lynching, still a common practice at the time.

"In addition to influencing singers such as Frank Sinatra and Abbey Lincoln, she also opened doors for black women such as Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge to sing in clubs that had primarily white audiences," Griffin added.

However, Griffin contends the oversimplification of celebrities' lives—whether it's Elvis Presley or revolutionary Che Guevara—is a necessary part of the icon-building process.

"It is also easier for them to become commodities if they are one-dimensional icons," said Griffin.

While the icon-building process thwarts a broad understanding of a historical figure's life, it does increase his or her fame.

"If Billie Holiday had not become an icon, she'd be much less known today," Griffin said. "In her own time, Ella Fitzgerald was much better known as a singer than was Holiday. However, Holiday's tragedies were publicized and Fitzgerald's were not, a difference that helped elevate Holiday to the standing she has today."

Griffin has written extensively in the fields of African-American literature, music, history and politics. She authored Who Set You Flowin'? The African-American Migration Narrative (Oxford University Press, 1995), edited Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus (Knopf, 1999) and co-edited Stranger in the Village: Two Centuries of African-American Travel Writing (Beacon, 1998).