四十岁的容颜，六十岁的灵魂，八十岁的声音

Billie Holiday，也被称作 Lady Day，以其独特的声音表达和即兴演唱技巧闻名于世。这张唱片是她的倒数第二张专辑，也是一张翻唱专辑。专辑中的歌曲源自《The Great American Songbook》，所选的每一首都是爵士乐的经典曲目。她天生就有一副好嗓子，之所以在这张专辑中变得沙哑破败，皆是因为放纵自我：毒品成瘾、酗酒以及遭受家庭虐待导致她的健康状况急剧恶化，嗓音也随之受损。发行这张专辑仅一年后，Billie Holiday 就离世了，年仅44岁

她的一生可以说充满了不幸。为了更清楚的呈现她的经历，我从她的自传《Lady Sings The Blues》中摘录了几段内容并进行了翻译：

Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen, and I was three.

爸爸和妈妈结婚时还只是两个孩子。他十八岁，她十六岁，而我那时三岁

When she was upset she’d beat me something awful. Not with a strap, not with a spank on the ass, but with her fists or a whip.

（这段的背景是童年时期，父母外出打工，她和亲戚挤在一所小房子里）当她（Cousin Ida）不高兴的时候，她会用很恶劣的方式打我。不是用带子，不是用手，而是用拳头或鞭子

One day when I came home from school Mom was at the hairdresser’s and there was nobody in the house but Mr. Dick, one of our neighbors. He told me Mother had asked him to wait for me and then take me a few blocks away to somebody’s house, where she would meet us.Without me thinking anything about it, he took me by the hand and I went along. When we got to the house, a woman let us in. I asked for my mother and they said she would be along soon. I think they told me she had called them on the telephone and said she would be late. It got later and later and I began to get sleepy. Mr. Dick saw me dozing and took me into a back bedroom to lie down. I was almost asleep when Mr. Dick crawled up on me and started trying to do what my cousin Henry used to try. I started to kick and scream like crazy. When I did, the woman of the house came in and tried to hold my head and arms down on the bed so he could get at me. I gave both of them a hard time, kicking and scratching and screaming. Suddenly, when I was catching my breath, I heard some more hollering and shouting. The next thing I knew, my mother and a policeman broke the door down. I’ll never forget that night. Even if you’re a whore, you don’t want to be.A bitch can turn twenty-five hundred tricks a day and she still don’t want nobody to rape her. It’s the worst thing that can happen to a woman. And here it was happening to me when I was ten.

（这段的背景是父母离婚，母亲努力工作存钱，终于有了自己的家）有一天，当我放学回家时，妈妈正在理发店，家里只有我们的邻居 Mr.Dick。他告诉我，母亲让他等着我，并让他带我去几个街区外的别人家里，她会在那里和我们见面。没等我想清楚，他就拉着我的手一起走了。当我们到达那个地方时，一位女士让我们进去。我问起了妈妈，他们说她很快就会来。时间越来越晚，我开始犯困了。Mr.Dick 看到我在打瞌睡，就把我带到后面的卧室躺下。在我几乎要睡着时，Mr.Dick 爬到我身上，并开始尝试做我表弟 Henry 曾经尝试过的事。我开始疯狂地踢腿和尖叫。房子里的女主人这时进来了，并试图将我的头和手臂压在床上，以便他可以接近我。我疯狂的反抗，尖叫着边踢边抓。突然，我听到一阵呼喊声。接下来，我的母亲和一名警察破门而入。我永远不会忘记那个夜晚。即使你是妓女，你也不想被强奸。一个婊子一天能玩出两千五百个把戏，但她仍然不想让任何人强奸她。这是对一个女人来说最糟糕的事情。当我十岁时，这件事就发生在我身上

But this wasn’t punishment enough. They wouldn’t let me sleep in the dormitory with the other girls. Another girl had died and they had her laid out in the front room. And for punishment they locked me in the room with her for the night. Maybe it was the girl who broke her neck on the swing. I don’t really remember. All I knew was I couldn’t stand dead people ever since my great-grandmother had died holding me in her arms. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stand it. I screamed and banged on the door so, I kept the whole joint from sleeping. I hammered on the door until my hands were bloody.

（这段是由于被强奸的经历，她被送到了一个天主教机构。因为在机构里违反规定，遭受了惩罚）另一个女孩死了，他们把她放在前屋里。作为惩罚，他们把我和她锁在一个房间里过夜。那个女孩也许是死于在秋千上扭断了脖子。我不太记得了。我只知道，自从我的曾祖母抱着我去世后，我就无法忍受死人。我无法入睡，实在受不了了，我就尖叫着敲门，不让所有人睡觉。我用力的敲着，直到双手流血

soon had two young white cats to match I could depend on regular every week, one on Wednesday, one Saturday. Sometimes one of them would make it twice a week. The madam took five out of every twenty dollars for the rent. This still left me more than I could make in a damn month as a maid.

（十三岁时沦为雏妓）很快我就遇到了两只可以依靠的年轻的白猫（隐喻），他们每周都很规律，周三来一个，周六来一个。有时他们中的一个人每周会做两次。妈咪（隐喻）从每二十块钱中拿出五块钱作为房租。这仍然比我当女佣一个月的收入还多

I went to jail for refusing to go to bed with Blue. I tried to tell him it wasn’t anything personal, I just wasn’t going to bed with any more Negroes. Blue knew I was a baby, but he had me busted just the same. He and Bub were real tight with the cops. The next morning I was in the kitchen with the other girls having breakfast when the cops broke in. They had stool-pigeon witnesses with them who screamed at me. “That’s her,” they said, pointing at me. That’s her.So they hauled me off to jail, not for anything I did, but for something I wouldn’t do. Those were rotten days. Women like Mom who worked as maids, cleaned office buildings, were picked up on the street on their way home from work and charged with prostitution. If they could pay, they got off. If they couldn’t they went to court, where it was the word of some dirty grafting cop against theirs.knew if you pleaded guilty you caught hell. If you pleaded not guilty, you might even get worse. I didn’t have anybody to get me a lawyer, not that it would have done much good. If that judge had guessed for a minute I was only fifteen she would probably have packed me off to Bedford Reformatory until I was twenty-one.But Mom came down to court and stopped that. She swore on a stack of Bibles I was eighteen. If they had checked up on her, it would have showed Mom had given birth to me when she was nine. But they didn’t. It cost Mom a lot to tell a lie like that. She couldn’t stand lying and made me the same way. She never lied unless she had to save somebody’s life. And neither did

（因为莫须有的罪名差点被判刑）我因为拒绝和 Blue 上床而进了监狱。我告诉他这不是私人恩怨，我只是不想再和黑人上床了。Blue 知道我还是个孩子，但他还是照样把我抓了。他跟 Bub 与警察勾结很深。第二天早上，我正在厨房里和其他女孩一起吃早餐时，警察闯了进来。他们身边的线人指着我大声叫喊着：“就是她”。因此他们把我抓进监狱，不是因为我做了什么事，而是因为我不愿意做的事。那是一段糟糕的日子。像妈妈这样做过女佣，打扫过办公楼的女性，下班回家路上会被他们抓到，并被指控卖淫。如果她们能付钱，就会被放掉。如果她们没有钱，就会被推上法庭，法庭上有一些肮脏的贪污警察会给她们颜色看。我知道如果认罪的话就会陷入地狱，但是不认罪的话，情况会更糟。没有人帮我找律师，这也没什么好处。如果那位法官猜到我只有十五岁，她可能会把我送到管教所关到二十一岁。但妈妈出庭制止了这件事，她对着一叠《圣经》发誓，我当时十八岁。如果他们对她进行过调查的话，就会发现妈妈在她九岁时就生下了我，还好他们没有。妈妈为了撒这样的谎付出了很大的代价，她和我一样厌恶说谎。除了救人性命之外她从不说谎，我也是如此

We moved into an apartment on 139th Street, and not long after, for the first time since I could remember, Mom was too sick to make Mass on Sunday. For her, that was really sick. Give her coffee every morning and Mass every Sunday, and she thought she could go on working forever. But she had to quit working out as a maid. She couldn’t even walk, her stomach was so shot. She just had to stay put in bed.What little money we had saved started running out and she was getting panicky. She had worked for most of her life, and it was beginning to tell on her. For almost half of that time she had been grieving over Pop. This didn’t help any.I had decided I was through turning tricks as a call girl. But I had also decided I wasn’t going to be anybody’s damn maid. The rent always seemed to be due.I used to go right down there and haunt him. About that time Fletcher Henderson’s band was working downtown at the Roseland Ballroom. It was the first Negro band to work there, and Pop Holiday was with them on the guitar. Sick as she was, Mom was too proud to turn to Pop and ask his help with the rent money. But not me.Pop was in his early thirties then, but he didn’t want anyone to guess it—especially the young chicks who used to hang around the entrance waiting for the musicians.I was around fifteen then, but I looked plenty old enough to vote. I used to wait for him down in the hallway. I’d try to catch his eye and call out to him, “Hey, Daddy.” I soon found out just waving at him would make him feel like forty-five, and he didn’t like that. He used to plead with me.I’m going to call you Daddy all night unless you give me some damn money for rent,” I’d tell him. That would do it.“I’d take the money home to Mom, proud as all get out. But I couldn’t hurt her feelings by telling her where it came from. If she kept worrying me about it, I’d finally tell her I stole it. Then we’d have a fight and she’d tell me I was going to end up in jail again.

（母亲病重无法工作）我们搬进了 139 街的一间公寓，不久之后，这是我记事以来第一次，妈妈病得太重，连周日的弥撒都没法去。对她来说，这真是病得不轻了。每天早上一杯咖啡，每周日去一次弥撒，她觉得自己就能永远坚持工作下去。但现在她不得不辞掉女佣的工作，她的胃已经糟糕透了，甚至连走路都成问题，只能卧床休息。我们攒下的那点钱开始见底，她开始感到惊慌。她大半辈子都在辛勤工作，这些年终于让她的身体吃不消了。几乎有一半的时间她都在为爸爸（这里是继父）感到悲伤。这没有任何帮助。我已经决定不再当雏妓了，但我也决定我不会成为任何人的女仆。但房租总是要到期。大约在那个时候，Fletcher Henderson 的乐队正在市中心的宴会厅工作。这是第一支在那里工作的黑人乐队，我的生父和他们一起弹吉他。尽管妈妈病得很重，但她还是太骄傲了，无法向我的生父寻求帮助来支付房租，但那不是我的性格。为此常去缠着我的他。当时他三十出头，但他不想让任何等在门口的年轻女孩知道他的年龄。那时我大约十五岁，但看起来已经足够大了，可以投票了。我常常在走廊等他并喊他：“嘿，爸爸”。我很快发现他不喜欢这样，因为仅仅向他挥手就会让他感觉自己像四十五岁，为此他常恳求我别在大庭广众之下叫他。我会告诉他，我整晚都会叫你爸爸，除非你给我一些该死的房租钱。通过这样的方式我要到了钱，把钱带回家给妈妈，并为此感到自豪。但我不能告诉她钱来自哪里，从而伤害她的感情。如果她一直担心我，我最终会告诉她我偷了它。我们一定会为此吵一架

They were going to throw me out on my ear, but I kept begging for the job. Finally the piano player took pity on me. He squashed out his cigarette, looked up at me, and said, “Girl, can you sing?I said, “Sure I can sing, what good is that?” I had been singing all my life, but I enjoyed it too much to think I could make any real money at it. Besides, those were the days of the Cotton Club and all those glamour pusses who didn’t do nothing but look pretty, shake a little, and take money off tables.I thought that was the only way to make money, and I needed forty-five bucks by morning to keep Mom from getting set out in the street. Singers were never heard of then, unless it was Paul Robeson, Julian Bledsoe, or someone legit like that.So I asked him to play “Trav’lin’ All Alone.” That came closer than anything to the way I felt. And some part of it must have come across. The whole joint quieted down. If someone had dropped a pin, it would have sounded like a bomb. When I finished, everybody in the joint was crying in their beer, and I picked thirty-eight bucks up off the floor. When I left the joint that night I split with the piano player and still took home fifty-seven dollars.

(因为没钱和母亲一起被赶出了公寓，在酒吧崭露头角) 他们本来想把我扔出去，但我一直乞求得到这份工作。最后弹钢琴的人可怜了我。他掐灭香烟，抬头看着我，说道：“小孩，你会唱歌吗？”我说：“当然会唱歌，但那有什么用呢？” 我这辈子都在唱歌，我太喜欢它了，但我从没想过能靠它挣钱。那时正是夜总会的时代，那些光鲜亮丽的花瓶什么都不用做，只需看起来漂亮，扭动几下，就能从桌上拿走钱，我认为这才是赚钱的唯一途径。而我急需在早上之前凑够四十五美元，才能让妈妈不被赶到街上。那时候知名的歌手并不多，除非是 Paul Robeson, Julian Bledsoe，或者其他像他们那样的人物。我叫他弹了 Trav'lin' All Alone，这首歌完美表达了我当时的感受。当我唱完时，整个酒吧安静了下来。安静的如果有人掉了一根别针，听起来就像一颗炸弹一样，整个酒吧都为之动容。我从地板上捡起了三十八美元打赏。那天晚上，当我离开酒吧时，我与钢琴演奏者分了钱，但仍然带回家了五十七美元

........

Billie Holiday 就这样开始了她的音乐生涯，而此时她才十五六岁。很难想象一个未成年人的经历能如此复杂。如果对她后面的经历感兴趣，可以去看看她的自传

Billie Holiday 被迫提早面对人生的无奈与黑暗面，这或许是她的歌曲中成熟和令人动容的原因之一。通过了解 Billie Holiday 的人生经历，我们能更好地理解她音乐中蕴含的情感深度。然而，坦白说，即便有了这些背景铺垫，作为一个非英语母语者，我仍然难以完全欣赏这张专辑。我觉得欣赏非母语的抒情歌曲是存在门槛的。具体来说，非母语者要真正理解和欣赏抒情歌曲，通常需要跨越两个阶段：

第一个阶段是理解唱的内容是什么，也就是理解歌词。这并不算难，通过翻译就能做到 第二个阶段是理解唱的好不好。因为抒情类歌曲的重点是情感表达，而语言是情感表达中的重要部分。对于未曾在该语言环境中生活的听众来说，要领会歌声中的韵律之美、顿挫之美、声调之美，实在是一个极大的挑战

举个例子来说，一个外国人听到

“是谁，在敲打我窗”

以及

“是谁，送你来到我身边”

这两句歌词的时候，同样唱的是“是谁”二字，他们能体会这种语气和语调变化之间的美感吗，我持保留态度。对我目前的我来说，别说欣赏 Billie Holiday 后期这嘶哑的声音，就连 Frank Sinatra 这种磁性的声音我都不能完全的欣赏。留个坑后面填吧，看来还得练啊

下张专辑见