Billie's still the best

She was only 44 when a combination of hard living, hard drugs and hard times ended her life. Yet today, nearly half a century later, she exerts a remarkable power over new generations of female singers who never heard her live.

Even the youngest artists want to be linked with Billie Holiday. Norah Jones, Stacey Kent, Katie Melua, Clare Teal and Amy Winehouse are dominating the album charts with fringe jazz for the first time in years. Their quality is variable and their sounds and styles are a million miles removed from Billie's, but that does not stop their publicists freely comparing them to the incomparable Lady Day.

Apart from her music, there is another aspect of the Billie Holiday legend that demands reinterpretation. Politically aware black women in the arts and media, not only singers but writers, poets and visual artists, are coming to regard her as a misrepresented heroine whose struggles against sexism, racism and grinding poverty had an epic quality.

They see her not as the heroinravaged, gangster-dominated victim of male-authored biographies, but as a strong, black role-model who surmountedthe top. every obstacle to get to

Neneh Cherry, a singer-songwriter of pop, punk and world music, whose stepfather was a celebrated jazz trumpeter, admits a debt to Holiday. She will act as MC for a one-off event, Billie and Me, a multimedia tribute, with film, audio clips, performances and spoken commentary - part of the Barbican's annual Only Connect festival devoted to artful collaborations. The event is inspired by last year's well-received six-part Radio 2 documentary, made by Sarah Cropper.

"There was a lot of anger and a lot of tears as women talked on radio about the harassment that Billie had

faced," Cropper says, "and all the biographies which focused on her drug habit and sex life had not done her justice."

The performers have been chosen to reflect the diverse styles that Billie has influenced. Carleen Anderson (soul), Fontella Bass (gospel), Yolande Bavan and Dee Dee Bridgewater (jazz), Angelique Kidjo and Susheela Ramen (world), Meshell Ndegeocello (hip hop), Chrissie Hynde and Amy Winehouse (pop), backed by an Anglo-American band directed by the top female jazz drummer, Terri Lyne Carrington.

Neneh Cherry first heard Holiday as a child. "I thought of Billie as a queen, a torchlight. And for me listening to her gave me a feeling of security. That's because my parents would always play her records in the early evening when food was being cooked, a time when we were all together as a family. People talk about the pain in her voice, which was true, but I always felt the joy there too.

"I heard a dignity, a tremendous sense of pride. When she was singing it seemed like the one place in her life she could be complete, you know, the one place where it all made sense."

Growing up in conditions of vice and poverty in Baltimore, Billie's adult life was blighted by abusive relationships with men who introduced her to drugs. And when not dodging the pushers and plain-clothes narcotics officers who followed her from city to city, she also had to fight racism. It took courage for a black star to stand up to Hollywood moguls when given the demeaning role of a singing domestic servant in the 1946 musical, New Orleans, which was her first and last movie.

"It's important that young people know just how strong Billie Holiday was," says Cherry. "Billie was a rolemodel, an innovator and an activist. She wrote Strange Fruit, her protest song about lynchings, the bodies she saw hanging from trees when she was touring the South.

"That was a subject people didn't much want to hear about in those days. Even now it gives me goosebumps just to talk about it. But this show is not about looking back. It's something that enables us to go forward and bring our heritage with us."

OF course, there have been a lot of changes since then. " Many black women are doing well today," says Cherry, "from Beyoncé to Condoleezza Rice, but it's important to remember how difficult those times were, especially for a woman who wasn't white. Billie's achievement is that she lives on.

"I draw a lot from her, feeling her spirit. I play her to my kids and I think it's important that they'll continue listening to her too."

It is gratifying to find Billie's name back in lights, and it's encouraging that today's singers rate her so highly. But before trying the imitators, listen to the real thing. Her albums are still selling, quietly and steadily, in the jazz racks, where quality doesn't date.

Billie and Me is at the Barbican on 5 April at 7.30pm (020 7638 8891). The Only Connect season runs 1-24 April.