Strange Fruit

Singer Billy holliday

Year: 1939

Genre: Vocal, Jazz and Blue

Theme: Racism

The work:

A young musician and high school teacher, Allan Lewis, offers this Billie Holiday song he had written after seeing the lynching of Thomas Shipp and photographs of Abram Smith (1930, Marion, Indiana). These two men, African Americans, accused of stealing a white man and the rape of his girlfriend, had been beaten and lynched by the mob with the participation of the police. The text, "standard of blackness" whose raw rage and without appeal is more than a protest song, is an indictment for dignity and justice. Having perceived novelty and emotional power of this song, Billie Holiday creates for the first time at the Café Society, Strange Fruit. It raises in the first interpretation great emotion among spectators. The issue of recording the song does not capture the enthusiasm with his producer John Hammond, who compromising the judge. Most radio stations censor disk Strange Fruit, but sales are excellent. This song became the title song of the Café Society. It was taken up by many singers including Nina Simone, Diana Ross, Sting ...

Style:

Strange Fruit is a pretty piece jazz in harmonies and ranges used and can be considered a slow blues in particular on the tragic theme of the complaint. The blues is a style of music instrumental or sung, appeared in the United States during the nineteenth century, derived from African American work songs. The singer expresses his sorrow and his troubles. This song, written as a poem, has no chorus. The singing of Billie Holliday, with a slow articulation, drawling, very blues, is suggestive of a complaint own dramatic story to the African-American population. The lyrics of this song are very raw and pictorial, it is not recommended to translate exactly, but to reveal the theme only.

After the song:

Billie Holiday has allowed this poem to raise awareness of racism and power of art in the fight for the rights of blacks. The title "Strange Fruit" in question is a metaphor for the bodies of black victims lynched and hanged from trees and sometimes burned. It is music against the lynching commonly practiced in the South and West of the United States.

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