CAN music detonate anger, also when it comes from the larynx of a black person? It would seem not. And indeed it has not—as when Billie Holiday, throughout her hard life, sang from club to club in America in the 1930s.

In every song she sang, anger seemed to be lurking in the vocal cords. At once older and younger than her years (her short lifespan was 1915-1959), the history that shaped Billie Holiday was like clogged mud.

What had