etta james’ ideological becoming

a learning biography

Written for EDUC 421 Powerful Ideas for Learning Sciences and Technology Design: Sociocultural Practices of the Blues with Professor Roy Pea

Stanford Graduate School of Education | December 1, 2025

Etta James’ Ideological Becoming as a Blues Artist

Etta James, one of America’s most celebrated singers, led a storied life that provides a fascinating look into how humans learn and make meaning through continuous dialogue with ourselves and others. In this paper, I use Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin’s concept of ideological becoming to examine how James developed her sense of self through interaction with diverse voices, communities, and musical genres (Freedman & Ball, 2004). As Bakhtin and Medvedev (1978) stated, ideology is visible, unfolding “in sound, in gesture, in the combination of masses, lines, colors, living bodies” (p. 8). This visibility makes ideology “completely accessible to a unified and essentially objective method of cognition and study” (Bakhtin & Medvedev, 1978, p. 8). Events from James’ life therefore serve as observable evidence of ideological becoming in action. I examine the names James had, the communities she was a part of, the people who influenced her, and songs that defined her through the lens of Bakhtinian concepts, demonstrating how James’ unique combination of musical genres and vocal style were not merely artistic choices but acts of ideological synthesis created through active dialogue with the diverse voices of her time. Bakhtin (1981) emphasized that “the word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes ‘one’s own’ only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent” (p. 293). James took the musical genres around her, gospel, blues, and jazz, and populated them with her own intentions, creating a vocal style that was simultaneously inherited and original.

This paper traces James’ journey chronologically through key developmental periods. I start with her early childhood as Jamesetta Hawkins and her formative years in the Echoes of Eden choir. Then, I describe her involvement in the Creolettes, breakthrough moment with “Roll with Me, Henry,” transformation under Johnny Otis, and education at Modern Records. Finally, I conclude with her ideology culminating in her musical style and recording of her song “At Last.”

Jamesetta Hawkins

Etta James was raised in an environment that Bakhtin (1981) would call “heteroglot”, a term referring to a space where socio-ideological contradictions cohabit and continuously intersect without replacing or excluding one another (p. 291). Her childhood was fertile ground for centrifugal forces, diverse worldviews, that pushed James to fuse the worlds she was a part of and find her own voice in the process. In her autobiography, Rage to Survive: The Etta James Story, James (1995) recalled that as a toddler, she was “a peeker, eager to check out the world” (p. 5). This observer stance became her primary mode of learning in early childhood as she absorbed and synthesized the heteroglot world around her.

Etta James was born on January 25, 1938 as Jamesetta Hawkins. Her mother, Dorothy Hawkins, was only 14 years old at the time. From birth, James encountered conflicting truths about what her skin color meant and who her father was. Dorothy claimed James’ birth father was an Ethiopian mechanic, and consequently, James’ birth certificate listed her as Ethiopian. However, her light skin indicated otherwise, and she “caught hell” from both Black and white peers who called her “too light” or accused her of “trying to pass” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 22). A judge later ruled that the Ethiopian mechanic was not her father, widening James’ uncertainty about her origins. Dorothy frequently disappeared for months at a time, leaving James in the care of their landlords, Lula, whom Jamesetta called “Mama Lu,” and Jesse “Sarge” Rogers. When Dorothy visited, she often whisked James away to a motel, where Dorothy told James conflicting stories about her father’s identity. Mama Lu rescued James from the motels and brought her back to their home, where Mama Lu and Sarge reminded her that she was unlike her father. James later suspected her father was Minnesota Fats, a well-known white pool player, which made her a mixed-race child in a society sharply divided by racial categories. James (1995) recalled that “little Jamesetta’s head was swimming...different people were telling different stories about whose child I really was” (p. 9).

From Bakhtin’s perspective, James’ sense of self, from the color of her skin to her lineage, was “overpopulated by the intentions of others” (1981, p. 294). The conflicting perspectives about her skin color and birth father placed her in contact zones, where different social ideologies met and grappled with each other (Freedman & Ball, 2004). It was difficult for James to make sense of the misaligned truths and social ideologies imposed on her, which reflected Bakhtin’s theory (1981) that individuals must choose which words to appropriate when they appear foreign (p. 294). Bakhtin referred to how humans make sense of words, which carry multiple meanings. In the context of James’ childhood, I extend Bakhtin’s theory to how James encountered differing ideologies about race and her father. These ideologies existed independently within her and she formed her sense of self by selectively drawing from them. She was neither white nor Black, which both isolated and liberated her from fixed racial definitions from her peers. Similarly, both Mama Lu and Dorothy were accurate; James was unlike her white father and unlike her Black mother. This early experience of navigating competing ideologies about race, identity, and belonging would shape James’ pattern of combining contradictory influences rather than choosing one over another. Driven by a rootless early existence, James sought belonging, which she began to discover at church.

Echoes of Eden Choir

At age five, James joined the Echoes of Eden choir at St. Paul’s Baptist Church. In Bakhtinian terms, the church was a place with authoritative discourse, a prior discourse whose “authority was already acknowledged in the past” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 342). Bakhtin distinguishes between two types of discourse that compete to influence our development, authoritative discourse and internally persuasive discourse (Freedman & Ball, 2004, p. 8). I understand authoritative discourse as socially accepted voices with implied power (e.g., religious doctrine, social norms, institutional rules). It “demands that we acknowledge it, that we make it our own; it binds us, quite independent of any power it might have to persuade us internally” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 342). In contrast, internally persuasive discourse is what makes sense to us personally. It consists of ideas that resonate with our own values and understanding. As Bakhtin explains, internally persuasive discourse “is denied all privilege, backed by no authority at all, and is frequently not even acknowledged in society” (Bakhtin, 1981, p.342). This discourse shapes our thinking, even when it conflicts with what we are told to believe. Freedman and Ball (2004) explain that ideological becoming involves “an intense struggle within us for hegemony among various available verbal and ideological points of view” (p. 6). James’ experience in the church choir illustrates this struggle. When James joined the church, she became captivated by the choir’s lead singer, Professor James Earle Hines, whose voice she described as having “go-tell-it-on-the-mountain voice of glass-shattering force” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 18). James reflected, “That’s how I wanted to sing, with all that force. All that spill-your-guts-out power” (p. 18). Thus, James’ earliest vocal training involved assimilating Hines’ musical style despite gender boundaries. She recalled, “Didn’t make no difference that Professor Hines was a man. I didn’t know any better but to imitate a man” (p. 18). The authoritative discourse of the church suggested that James should sing in the women’s choir, conforming to gender expectations. Professor Hines’ voice differed from the soft and harmonious sound of the women’s choir, and which appealed to James. Her choice to imitate Hines represents an early example of her forming her internally persuasive discourse, and proves that authoritative discourses are not necessarily authoritarian. By choosing Hines as her model, James exercised agency in her own development, selecting from the available discourses rather than passively accepting a prescribed role. Hines treated James like a professional singer and told her, “Don’t back off those notes, Jamesetta. Attack ‘em, grab ‘em, sing ‘em like you own ‘em” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 19). Hines’ pedagogical approach aligns with Bakhtin’s (1981) view of populating language with one’s own intentions; Hines encouraged James to not merely reproduce notes but to make them her own through active appropriation (p. 293). When the congregation praised her singing, engaging in what Bakhtin (1986) termed responsive understanding, they reinforced James’ belief in her vocal abilities (p. 68). James sang, the congregation responded with praise, and this dialogic exchange shaped her understanding of what her voice could achieve, making her feel “there was no note I couldn’t reach” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 19).

Once word spread about the young girl at church who sang like a full-grown woman, Mama Lu, Sarge, and Dorothy became more involved in James’ life, with Sarge beginning to act as her informal manager (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 20). Gospel music taught James that her voice possessed value and power, a lesson that would sustain her through subsequent challenges. James continued to seek and find affirmation through musical performance, using her voice as a means of establishing identity and agency in circumstances where other forms of power were denied to her.

As James entered adolescence, she encountered an even wider medley of voices and opinions that contributed to her developing identity. She continued singing in church while also being drawn to the secular music she heard on the radio. She listened to rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and the emotional style that would later be called soul music. Her exposure to a range of musical genres created new tensions between authoritative and internally persuasive discourses. Dorothy brought James to a jazz bar, believing jazz was the “smartest music you can listen to” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 25). She scoffed at the “lowdown blues” emanating from record store speakers, dismissing blues music as “too unsophisticated” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 25). Mama Lu was spiritual and praised James when she sang gospel music. James found herself navigating these competing opinions from her mother figures. She admired jazz but found it demanding and disciplined, requiring one to be “exactly in tune, working out complex harmonies and subtle rhythms,” while “gutbucket blues was sloppy and sexy and easy as falling into bed” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 37). The church, Dorothy, and Mama Lu each represented distinct worldviews, presenting their own authoritative discourses about what kind of music mattered and what kind of singer James should become. Bakhtin (1986) wrote that “our thought itself...is born and shaped in the process of interaction and struggle with others’ thought” (p. 92). This period was an extension of the struggle that Bakhtin deems essential for development (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 346). James’ exposure to her mother figures’ authoritative opinions on music and eventual formation of her own viewpoint on blues music exemplifies this interaction. She didn’t abandon the vocal techniques she learned in church or the perspectives of her caregivers. Instead, she brought them into dialogue with her love of the blues. This created something new, a style that honored multiple viewpoints while remaining authentic to her voice.

The Creolettes

The summer James turned twelve, Mama Lu died after suffering multiple strokes. With no space to grieve her loss, James turned to rebellion and restlessness, channeling her emotions into disruptive behavior. Dorothy brought James to live in the Fillmore district of San Francisco, where James became involved with local gangs. This led to repeated juvenile detentions for assaulting white girls, events she later attributed to jealousy and displaced rage. James’ life shifted when she met Jean Mitchell and her sister Abye. James moved in with them and they formed a group called the Creolettes (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 39-41).

James was intrigued by vocal harmony, and the Creolettes started off by “imitating groups like the Spaniels, the Swallows, and the Chords” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 41). Her imitation and appropriation of other groups is a prime example of Bakhtin’s description of how we take utterances from others and make them our own through reinterpretation. As Bakhtin (1981) describes, we go through a process of “selectively assimilating the words of others” (p. 341). Bakhtin (1986) reminds us that “when we select words in the process of constructing an utterance...we mainly take from utterances that are kindred to ours in genre, that is, in theme, composition, or style” (p. 87). The Creolettes were not simply imitating these groups. They were entering dialogue with intentionally chosen musical styles, learning conventions from admirable groups while finding their voice within them. Vocal harmony itself is inherently dialogic, requiring multiple voices to create a unified whole where each singer must listen and respond to each other. In vocal harmony, each voice is both utterance and response, simultaneously asserting individuality while contributing to collective meaning. In this sense, vocal harmony also serves as a metaphor for Bakhtin’s view of the self. We don’t exist in isolation but in relation to others, and our identity emerges from this interplay. For James, this period of collaborative singing represented a critical stage in her ideological becoming. She learned to balance her voice with the voices of others, a skill that would lead her to her first breakthrough song, “Roll with Me, Henry.”

“Roll with Me, Henry”

The song that launched James’ career illustrates what Bakhtin terms “addressivity” and “answerability,” concepts that describe how all communication is directed toward someone and anticipates a response. When Hank Ballard and the Midnighters performed “Work with Me, Annie” at one of the venues where the Creolettes sang, James wrote “Roll with Me, Henry” as a direct response (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 43). James created what Bakhtin calls an utterance in ongoing dialogue. As Irvine explains, “an utterance is always addressed to someone and anticipates, can generate, a response” (2004, p. 8). “Roll with Me, Henry” only made sense in relation to “Work with Me, Annie.” It was addressed to Ballard’s song, written in anticipation of audience responses, and entered into broader dialogue about sexuality and gender. Bakhtin (1986) stated that “any utterance is a link in the chain of speech communication” (p. 84), and James’ answer song contributed to this chain by positioning itself within an existing conversation while transforming that conversation’s direction.

This answer song became a pivotal moment in James’ career. When Abye went to a Johnny Otis show and told him about the Creolettes, Otis immediately wanted to hear them sing. They went to his hotel and James shyly sang “Roll with Me, Henry” in the bathroom where the “tile made for good acoustics” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 45). After hearing them perform, Otis decided to bring them to Los Angeles to record the song. Since James was only fourteen and required parental consent, and since Dorothy was incarcerated at the time, James made a life-changing decision to forge a consent note (p. 46). Her boldness demonstrated James’ agency in shaping her future and marked a definitive step in her ideological formation, moving her from San Francisco to the commercial world of professional recording in Los Angeles.

The Peaches

In Los Angeles, Otis made a series of decisions that reshaped James’ identity. First, he renamed the group from “The Creolettes” to “The Peaches”. Then, he flipped Jamesetta’s name around to “Etta James,” giving her a new persona to fulfill (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 48-49). The creation of Etta James went further than just a stage name. Otis began playing “Roll with Me, Henry,” sung by Etta James, at a record shop he owned called Modern Records. He strategically built intrigue by talking about a “nameless singer” and sold more than 500 copies of the record before James herself knew about the sales. He then added his wife’s name to “Roll with Me, Henry” as a co-writer to increase his own royalties (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 49).

The complex turn of events shows how Etta James wasn’t just a new name for Jamesetta Hawkins. It was a persona commercially constructed by Otis to profit on her work, and symbolized her entry into the intricate world of music where she continuously fought for her name and rights. Yet James eventually made this imposed identity her own, an act of appropriation that further illustrates Bakhtin’s theory of how individuals populate others’ words with their own intentions. As James later reflected, “Etta James was the person I was trying to be, the woman I wanted to be” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 74). Her transformation captures Bakhtin’s (1981) observation that “the speaker...appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention” (p. 293). The name “Etta James” came from Otis, but James populated it with her own meaning over time. Jamesetta Hawkin’s ideological becoming as Etta James was forged through the dialogic process of both creating an internally persuasive interpretation of the name and becoming the person the name suggested. The conflict over naming illustrates a broader pattern in James’ life. She consistently faced attempts to define, limit, or exploit her identity, and she continued finding ways to transform these external definitions according to her own intentions.

Modern Records

James’ business education in the music industry continued at Modern Records, where she learned not only about music production but also about the economic and social structures that determined whose voice would be heard and how it would be valued. In 1955, the commercial success of “Roll with Me, Henry” was compromised when Georgia Gibbs, a white jazz singer, recorded a sanitized version called “Dance with Me, Henry” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 50). Gibbs’ version reached number one on the Most Played In Juke Boxes chart, spending three weeks at the top (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 50). From a Bakhtinian perspective, Gibbs took James’ utterance, her answer song to Ballard, and re-contextualized it in a way that stripped it of its original meanings and intentions. The sexual innuendos that made “Roll with Me, Henry” thrilling for a 1950s audience were smoothed out, and its success overshadowed James’ work. I differentiate Gibbs’ cover of James’ song from the creative appropriation that Bakhtin saw as necessary for language use. Bakhtin (1981) celebrated appropriation when it involved genuine dialogue, when the appropriator engaged with the original meaning and contributed new meanings in response. Instead, Gibbs’ cover was a form of extraction without dialogue, taking the economic value of James’ creative work while denying her the credit, the royalties, and the cultural recognition. A cover, while important and necessary for the continued appreciation of music, must also acknowledge the previous versions. This experience taught James that in the professional music world she now inhabited, not all voices had equal power or access, and her creations could be taken from her and remixed in ways she could not control. The Gibbs incident illustrates what Bakhtin (1981) identified as the political dimension of discourse, language and cultural expression are never neutral but always implicated in relations of power (p. 272). In this instance and the previous instance of Otis renaming James, the dialogue occurred not between James and Gibbs or Otis as individuals, but between James and the power structures that governed whose voice would be heard, how utterances would be valued, and who possessed the authority to define merit.

At Modern Records, James began what she called her business schooling, where her song revenue continued to be split across various players, including producers, managers, label executives, and others who claimed portions of her earnings (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 50). As Bakhtin (1981) explained, “language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker’s intentions” (p. 294). James learned that the music industry operated on the same principle. Record executives, producers, distributors, radio stations, and audiences had their own agendas that shaped how her voice would be heard and what it would mean. Unlike the Echoes of Eden choir, where James’ unvarnished voice reached her audience as she intended, her recordings with Otis were a mix of her own goals, Otis’ vision, and the work of numerous editors and producers. The mix of voices and intentions meant that even James’ own songs were never entirely “hers” in the way that her church performances had been. Towards the end of her relationship with Modern Records, Otis broke up the Peaches and packaged James up as a solo singer. This transition marked yet another moment in James’ development. The external restructuring of her as a solo artist coincided with her internal recognition that she had outgrown the group format. As James began her career as a solo artist, she had to learn how to protect her voice and to create a persona that was authentically and uniquely hers.

Becoming Etta James

The late 1950s marked a period of self growth for James, as she deliberately constructed her visual and musical identity. She crafted her outfits and publicity shoots based on her aunt Cozie, Dorothy’s older sister, aiming to be noticed and glamorous (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 61). She wore a blond wig, drawing inspiration from gay men. “They were setting my style and I was happy to go along,” she writes (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 61). She kept her eyebrows dark and thick because “that’s how all the bad girls look” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 61). James was learning to orchestrate and selectively appropriate the various influences she absorbed throughout her life. Musically, her conflict with Dorothy about artistic direction continued. Dorothy wanted her to achieve the sophistication of jazz singers like Billie Holiday, but James’ rebellious spirit drew her toward rhythm and blues. In Bakhtinian terms, James was forming her ideology, a coherent set of ideas, beliefs, and style that reflected her aspirations and vision, within a social context that included the gospel voice of Professor Hines, the vocal harmony training from the Creolettes, the emotional rawness of blues, the sophistication of jazz, the glamour of her aunt Cozie, and the energy of her street experience. She was not choosing one over the others. Instead, she was creating a new artistic voice and style, allowing all her influences to intersect and interact. Her polyphonic approach, Bakhtin’s term for the coexistence of multiple, independent voices within a single work or consciousness, became the cornerstone of James’ artistry and contributed to her signature song, “At Last.”

“At Last”

James’ recording of “At Last” in 1960 provides a culminating example of Bakhtinian concepts in action, demonstrating her capacity for dialogic appropriation. The song was written in 1941 and recorded multiple times before James encountered it. Bakhtin (1986) argued that language and cultural expression are interindividual, “everything that is said, expressed, is located outside the soul of the speaker and does not belong only to him. The word cannot be assigned to a single speaker” (p. 121-122). When James recorded “At Last” nearly twenty years after its composition, she was entering into dialogue with all its previous versions, with the musical styles that had emerged in the intervening years, and with her own experience merging gospel music and her love for the blues. The song came to James already “populated with meanings” from previous performances; it carried associations with the big band era, with romantic ballads, and with wartime nostalgia (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 293). James’ genius was making it her own while remaining in dialogue with earlier versions, allowing previous versions to contribute to her rendition without highlighting one over the other. She slowed the tempo, drawing out emotional weight. She brought vocal intensity learned from Professor Hines’ gospel and blues’ raw emotion, delivering the lyrics with a lighter touch than earlier versions. She transformed the song through her own intentions and accents (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 294). The result was an utterance responding to the versions that came before while creating something uniquely hers, a new version that became a reference point for future artists and her contribution to the ongoing dialogic expression.

The Unfinalizable Finale

What makes James’ story particularly powerful from a Bakhtinian perspective is that she repeatedly reinvented herself, returned to music, found new audiences, and continued creating until late in her life. James characterizes her driving force, fueled by diverse ideologies and voices imposed on her and within her, as her “rage”. She writes, “you can hear it in my music...I’ve had it when I was a little kid. I have it now. I have been racing, raging through life long as I remember... My rage finds me a way out” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 91). Her drive to continue making music aligns with Bakhtin’s insistence that “nothing conclusive has yet taken place” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 166). Despite time away from recording due to her drug addiction in the 1960s and 1970s, James had remarkable comebacks that demonstrated her ongoing ideological becoming. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the 1990s (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 251). In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked her number 62 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time (”Etta James, powerhouse,” 2012). In middle age, James worked with therapists to address her weight and drug addictions, and her therapists attributed her obesity to “my mother and our troubled relationship—me looking for love, trying and dying for acceptance” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 261).

In 1993, James entered into a dialogue with her past self, little Jamesetta, by dedicating an album to her mother, Dorothy. It was her first all-jazz album, featuring songs associated with Billie Holiday, Dorothy’s idol (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 261). Referring to both Billie Holiday and Dorothy, James reflected, “there is a strength in them that I hope lives in me” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 261). The album, Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday, won James her first Grammy award for best jazz vocal performance, much to her surprise after spending forty years singing the blues. When people asked her who the “Mystery Lady” was in the album title, James responded, “Well, she’s my mother. And Billie Holiday. And when it’s all said and done, the Mystery Lady is also me” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 264). This reply underscores the profound impact Dorothy had on James, emphasizing how Dorothy’s perspectives and worldview had become so integral to James’s own ideology that she saw herself reflected in both Dorothy and her idol. James was also in dialogue with her past authoritative self, the Jamesetta who thought jazz was too demanding, revisiting her ideologies about jazz and forming a new internal discourse about the elegance it represented to her mother and eventually, to her. Her Grammy award served as a response to her album, helping her redefine jazz music’s influence on her life.

James continued releasing music and performing at major music festivals worldwide until shortly before her death in 2012. Bakhtin (1986) argued that “even past meanings, that is those born in the dialogue of past centuries, can never be stable” (p. 170). The ongoing discourse about James and reinterpretations of her work is proof that her music and the meaning behind her lyrics continue to evolve. Her autobiography itself was an act of dialogism, a response to how her life had been narrated by others and an attempt to assert her own voice in the ongoing conversation about who Etta James was and what her music meant. In 2011, Swedish DJ Avicii sampled her 1962 song “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” in his song “Levels,” which reached the top 100 songs in the United States for multiple weeks and propelled Avicii to mainstream success. Each new artist who covers James’ songs, each listener who discovers her recordings, or each student who writes about her work continues the dialogue that was her life, continuing to create new meanings that she could not have fully anticipated but that she made possible. Our ongoing dialogue with James’ work and life proves Bakhtin’s (1986) statement that meaning is never closed but “always oriented toward the future” and “can never be stable” but will “always change (be renewed) in the process of subsequent, future development” (p. 170).

Conclusion

When Etta James sang, she never sang alone. Her voice carried echoes of childhood church choirs, Professor Hines’ “glass-shattering force,” the Creolettes’ vocal harmony, Dorothy’s love for jazz, and Mama Lu’s spiritual values. Yet her voice was uniquely her own, a distinctive sound in the “unfinalizable” dialogue stretching before her birth and continuing beyond her death (Irvine, 2004). James took inherited languages, including musical, social, and cultural forms, and made them her own through utterances in her life and music. From being “a peeker, eager to check out the world” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 5), James engaged in a dialogic developmental process. She observed the heteroglot world, absorbed contradictory voices, and learned to bring them into dialogue with her emerging self. Her journey from Jamesetta to Etta James illustrates Bakhtin’s concept of ideological becoming. She was always becoming (always in dialogue) with external and internal voices, never arriving at a fixed identity, but continuously evolving through engagement with others and changing contexts. Her story offers a case study of Bakhtin’s theories about how we live in “a world of others’ words” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 143) and make meaning through our responses to those words. Her life demonstrates several Bakhtinian principles.

First, identity emerges through dialogue with multiple voices rather than through isolation. James did not simply imitate other singers or songs. Rather, she engaged with the different sounds, allowing them to interact within her consciousness while ultimately crafting her own synthesis. As Bakhtin and Medvedev (1978) explain “the individual, isolated person does not create ideologies, that ideological creation and its comprehension only take place in the process of social intercourse” (p. 126).

Second, power relations shape whose voices are heard and how they are valued. James’ experience with Georgia Gibbs’ appropriation of “Roll with Me, Henry” and her ongoing battles for creative and financial control shows that dialogue does not occur in a neutral space but is always implicated in relations of power. Understanding ideological becoming requires attending to these power dynamics and recognizing that not all voices have equal access to cultural platforms or economic rewards.

Third, development is always oriented toward future possibilities. James continued evolving artistically and personally throughout her life, returning to jazz late in her career, reinterpreting her relationship with her mother through the Mystery Lady album, and remaining open to new musical directions. Her career exemplifies Bakhtin’s (1984) principle that “everything is still in the future and will always be in the future” (p. 166), demonstrating that human development does not culminate in a fixed endpoint but remains perpetually open to transformation.

James’ music continues to speak, to invite response, and to generate new meanings. Her journey and artistry teaches me not only about music but also about what it means to learn and to form an authentic self in a world of others’ words. James’ story reminds me that learning involves active participation and dialogue with educators, caregivers, communities, and our own multiple voices. We learn to respond intentionally to the voices around us, navigating multiple worldviews while maintaining integrity. Her life suggests that education should cultivate not just knowledge but also the metacognitive capacity to reflect on whose voices we internalize and why. Perhaps most importantly, her statement that “Etta James was the person I was trying to be, the woman I wanted to be” (James & Ritz, 1995, p. 74) serves as an example of how learning and identity formation is future-oriented. We not only respond to the past but also engage in dialogue with who we might become. In the context of education, I think about how to nurture students’ capacity to imagine future possibilities, engage in ongoing dialogue with their emerging selves, and recognize that development is a lifelong process of becoming rather than a finite achievement of being.

Etta James’ life demonstrates that ideological becoming is a lived process through which individuals navigate competing discourses, appropriate external voices, and create genuine identities. By understanding this process, educators can better support learners in their own journeys of ideological becoming, creating effective learning experiences that honor multiple voices while encouraging authentic self-expression, acknowledge power relations while fostering agency, and recognize learning as a process always oriented toward future possibilities.

References

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Bakhtin, M. M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics (C. Emerson, Ed. & Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.

Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays (V. W. McGee, Trans.; C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Eds.). University of Texas Press.

Bakhtin, M. M., & Medvedev, P. N. (1978). The formal method in literary scholarship: A critical introduction to sociological poetics (A. J. Wehrle, Trans.). Harvard University Press.

“Etta James, powerhouse ‘At Last’ singer, dies at 73”. New York Amsterdam News. January 27, 2012. Archived from the original on February 7, 2023. Retrieved November 29, 2025.

Freedman, S. W., & Ball, A. F. (2004). Ideological becoming: Bakhtinian concepts to guide the study of language, literacy, and learning. In A. F. Ball & S. W. Freedman (Eds.), Bakhtinian perspectives on language, literacy, and learning (pp. 3-33). Cambridge University Press.

Irvine, M. (2004). Mikhail Bakhtin: Main theories—Dialogism, polyphony, heteroglossia, open interpretation. Georgetown University.

James, E., & Ritz, D. (1995). Rage to survive: The Etta James story. Villard Books.