Strange Fruit

[ConsAreLiars]

Yesterday's Democracy Now! broadcast included a brief video of Billie Holiday singing "Strange Fruit." The show is archived at http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/28/1410224 and the clip is just before the segment on the lynching re-enactment which was done as a call for prosecution of 59-year old murder of four.

This is one of those songs that tell a core truth in a way that mere words cannot. If you haven't heard it before, or not listened recently, I ask you to listen. This song is is a reminder of the dark side of US history, the story of Billie Holiday's hard life, lynchings, and the persecution/prosecution of political enemies during the McCarthy era. See http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USACstrangefruit.htm for a brief synopsis.

And most of all, it is a warning that they never went away. The forces controlling the Con party are the direct outgrowth of those behind the lynchings, and the hate crimes and vitriol now openly directed against GBLT or immigrant minorities comes from the same source and serves the same political strategy.

The lyrics:

Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves
Blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
The scent of magnolia sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
for the rain to gather
for the wind to suck
for the sun to rot
for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

Composed by Abel Meeropol (aka Lewis Allan)
Originally sung by: Billie Holiday


Listen here: http://radio.terra.com.br/busca/musicas.php?musica=Strange%20Fruit
One source for the mp3 is: http://www.livinblues.com/music/BillieStrangeFruit.mp3

The Nina Simone version is on this page: http://www.literatura.co.il/website/index.asp?id=11664

(edit slightly for clarity)

[H2O Man]

1. A great song ....

It was one of Malcolm X's favorites.

[ConsAreLiars]

10. Much music is just entertainment, but occasionally

something is created that goes straight to the heart/soul/gut and touches you in a way that is transformative. Malcolm X didn't need to hear this song to understand our history, but for me hearing it made the history real in a way that nothing else had.

(edit: I heard it long ago, but the Democracy Now! broadcast was the incentive to bring it to DU's attention, for those who have not.)

[blondeatlast]

2. It has a starring role on my iPod; the version is LIVE.

When she trails off on the last note, you could hear a pin drop.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. Ssssssshhh! People might think that such things really happened.

They might even start to think that flying the 'fedrut flag might be offensive to some people and that racism still exists.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

4. from Lady Sings the Blues....love her

[Missy Vixen]

5. Billie Holiday and "Strange Fruit"

I read an article in "Vanity Fair" several years ago about Billie Holiday and "Strange Fruit"; the writer mentioned that Miss Holiday was almost tired of singing the song. She wondered if it actually had an impact, and if people listened, or they wanted to hear it because it was considered risky in that time to talk about racial prejudice.

My husband and I went to a theater show last year in which the actress portrayed Billie Holiday towards the end of her career. The theater was silent when the actress sang "Strange Fruit," and for several minutes afterwards.

If you'd like to read more about Miss Holiday, please go to http://www.ladyday.net.

Julie

[annabanana]

6. "actually had an impact"?

It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up every time I hear it... and then my eyes sting with regretful tears.

powerful powerful stuff

[Missy Vixen]

8. The guy that wrote the article

said that towards the end of her life, she worried that it was more of a "happening" type thing than actually having impact on the listeners. I'm so sorry it isn't posted on the web, or I would link to it so everyone could see it.

The song raises the hair on the back of my neck, too. There were a lot of people in the theater crying after the actress sang that song. I don't think Lady Day ever could have imagined that people would still be listening to it 50 years later, and working for a better world as a result of her deciding to release it.

Julie

[Lannes]

7. I saw a piece on it on NPR a few months ago

Apparently her label didnt want her to release the song so she released it with her own money.Hanting melody.

[Eloriel]

9. I've heard it but once

That one time was unforgetable, simply unforgetable. Haunting in a way you NEVER forget, or get over.

[omega minimo]

11. Art will save us

"Strange Fruit" sung by BH makes you see, feel and stand inside the horrifying story of those times.


:smoke:

[ConsAreLiars]

12. A kick - Everyone need to hear this (nt)

[Brewman_Jax]

13. Without Sanctuary

http://withoutsanctuary.org/ here is found the strange fruit of which she sang. :(

[ConsAreLiars]

16. Very disturbing images and very instructive -- terrorism used by the

powers-that-be against any who dare defy the status quo. The notes accompanying #6 are as follows:

Tampa had built a flourishing cigar manufacturing industry by providing liberal incentives to manufacturers. The unionizing of workers and the violence erupting from strikes threatened the town's economy. Two Italian immigrants were accused of union sympathy and of shooting J. F. Esterling, a bookkeeper for the West Tampa cigar factory. City fathers were alarmed that an "American" would be subjected to attack. While the "conspicuous" immigrants, neither one of which was recognized previously as strikers, were being taken to a safer jail in a horse-drawn hack, a mob separated them from a suspiciously modest guard consisting of one deputy sheriff and fireman. The mob fled in automobiles, a luxury afforded by only the elite in Tampa, which suggested that they were "men with boiled shirts, high collars, diamonds, and kid gloves."

The lynchers' note read: "Beware! Others take notice or go the same way. We know even more. We are watching you. If any more citizens are molested look out." The note was signed, "Justice." Warning notes posted at lynching sites were common forms of intimidation; in this case it was a clear threat to other strikebreakers. Threatening notes and letters, and now email messages are still used throughout the United States by moral regulators and right-wing groups such as the Klan. Mobs costumed their dead victims in mocking fashion, dressing them with hats and other objects; in this case a hat and pipe. In one incident the killers posed the corpse upright in a chair and glued on cotton sideburns and hair to recreate the stereotype of the "good old darky."

[me b zola]

14. I miss listening to BH

One of my favorite artists, but my raggety cassette tape broke and I haven't replaced it yet.

Thanks for posting this, I imagine I will hunt for a replacement tomarrow:)

[misanthrope]

15. Abel Meeropol...

...was also an ardent Leftist who adopted the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Meeropol also penned the song "The House I Live In," a tune decrying prejudice in America. A young Frank Sinatra sang it in a short film to a gang of backstudio "street children."

Billie made "Strange Fruit" famous at the Cafe Society, a Manhattan jazz club that played host to the progressives of its day, bearing the slogan "The Wrong Place for the Right People."

Holiday always saved "Strange Fruit" for the last tune of the night. Understandably, it most always met with lengthy pauses of nervous silence and grief after its conclusion.

She was once run out of Mobile, Alabama for performing the number.

[mopinko]

17. real art is about truth, not beauty

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