There’s a running joke within our community that time travel — going back in time, specifically — is something we never want to mess with. While not wanting to experience each previous decade’s brand of racism is justifiable, I have always been curious about the brilliance of vintage Black expression. Old scenes from a retro film, lines from a Toni Morrison novel, or even a melody from an old song spark my desire to know, more intimately, the art that laid the roots for our current cultural expression. Kandace Springs’ newest album, ”Lady in Satin,” struck that chord for me.
The vocalist and pianist (whose career was catapulted by encouragement from the iconic Prince), brings us back to 1958 in her musical tribute to the pioneering blues singer Billie Holiday. While Springs is a contemporary jazz artist, the project thrust Springs out of her comfort zone. “My safe spot is behind the piano because I feel in control,” Springs tells me. “I can lay the chords how I want, the spacing how I want. But in this case, it was all about Billie Holiday and reliving where she might’ve been at that time.”
With help from the 60-piece Portuguese Orquestra Clássica de Espinho, each track taps into Holiday’s signature grit and tenderness—serving as a balm that eases listeners in even the most turbulent of times. Springs tells me that it wasn’t her intention to emulate Holiday’s sound but instead evoke her energy. “Nobody sounds like her. She sounds like an instrument,” says Springs. Instead, she experimented with specific stylistic notes and runs unique to Holiday’s technique. “I’d go back into some of her enunciations of stuff. And then just think, ‘how did she feel when she was with the orchestra?’”
Prior to listening to this album, which dropped on May 9, I’d never really consciously explored jazz and blues, especially its earlier iterations, on my own despite growing up in a household that valued the diaspora and all of its creative expression. My dad was a Black music enthusiast, and on any given day, he filled our home with the sounds of everything from James Brown, Funkadelic, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, and Aretha Franklin to Fela Kuti and Mariam Makeba, Wu-Tang Clan and Sister Nancy — his taste was eclectic. Jazz was high on his list, and on weekends, when he was in a more introspective mood, he’d tune into WBGO, a radio station that would provide my earliest exposure to jazz legends like the Billie Holiday.
But I’d never delved into the genre myself and so hadn’t ruminated on the poignant messaging about Black American womanhood during this era. As a teen, my pink iPod mini was filled with popular R&B and hip-hop hits consisting of catchy hooks, addictive beats and, oftentimes, a sample of something classic.
And thanks to my dad, I was aware of where the sample came from, but didn’t glean the significance of the original. I knew that “Killing Me Softly” by the Fugees was a remake of a song I’d heard my parents sing by Roberta Flack. But, like kids, I naively believed the version that existed in the present was “better.”
Because, after all, appreciating anything from that long ago felt backward. I couldn’t see all of the ways their expressions mirrored my own feelings and the things I was going through. I didn’t realize at the time that not delving into the roots of Black music was a disservice to my own development.
As a Black person, looking to the past can be extremely painful — and so I didn’t take time to fully immerse myself in the cultural significance of certain musical moments. While, in some ways, this avoidance is a trauma response, it is also one way we contribute to the normalized cycle of commodifying and erasing Blackness.
The older I get, the more invested I become in protecting Black creativity and intellectual property of the past because, in many ways, it provides us a road map. Especially as we navigate a period in our country where things feel like they are literally going backward socially and politically.
Which is why Springs’ ”Lady in Satin” felt worthy of writing about here. It engaged me enough to want to delve into Holiday’s catalog, exposing me to the artistic journey of a Black woman navigating adversity, ironically, in many ways that we do today. And while our struggles — which include alarming maternal mortality rates, a lack of equity at work and the risk of protesting injustices — are unique today, they reflect a similar disenfranchisement and fight to simply exist that I hear in Holiday’s music.
Exploring Holiday’s sound through Springs felt like the closest I’d ever get to time travel. Springs’ treatments of “You Don’t Know What Love Is” and “Glad To Be Unhappy” especially, to me on a journey that allowed me to cultivate a profound appreciation for the community of artists who create in ways that speak to audiences across generations. “If we can spread her music so people can just get even a dash of who she was, it’s all worth it,” Springs tells me.
I now get why Holiday’s music was important enough for Springs to explore it emotionally and melodically. Holiday’s songs were about love, but she also poignantly engaged in the social and political climate of the times. In the 1930s, she released ”Strange Fruit,” widely known as the ”first protest song of the civil rights era.” The song, adapted from a poem depicting lynchings in the South, is a haunting reminder of a reality I was so hesitant to visit through music.
And though most of Holiday’s music was not overtly political, her songs about the complexities of love gave her widely Black fan base space to explore raw emotion while seeking refuge from the hate around them. It provided an opportunity to dream of a world safe enough to put their emotions on full display, whether they were bursting with love or wallowing in heartbreak.
Springs’ “Lady in Satin” is not just an ode — it’s its own body of reflection and an introspective journey through the joy and sorrow of our experience as grown Black women in 2025. And for me, listening today, both artists gave me deeper access to the force that is my own vulnerability.