Strange Fruit

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Strange Fruit (English for Strange Fruit is) a piece of music that since the appearance of the Afro-American singer Billie Holiday in 1939 in the Café Society in New York became known worldwide. That of Abel Meeropol composed and lyrics written song is one of the strongest artistic statements against lynchings in the southern states of the USA and as an early expression of the US civil rights movement . The term Strange Fruit has established itself as a symbol of lynching.

The Strange Fruit mentioned in the song is the body of a black man hanging from a tree. The text gains its emotional impact above all from the fact that it takes up the image of the rural and traditional south and confronts it with the reality of lynching.

background

“ … For the sun to red / for a tree to drop / Here is a strange and bitter crop. ”

Even after the end of slavery and the reconstruction era, racism remained a common phenomenon in the United States . The United States Supreme Court had allowed racial segregation under the principle of segregated but equal , which in practice very rarely resulted in but equal . According to rather conservative assumptions of the Tuskegee Institute , a total of 3833 people were lynched between 1889 and 1940; Ninety percent of these murders took place in the southern states, with four-fifths of the victims being African American. Often even a crime was not necessary as an occasion for the murder; As in the Emmett Till case , the reason was sometimes enough: So that blacks don't get too rebellious. In 1939 there had already been three lynchings, and a survey in the southern states showed that six out of ten whites supported the practice of lynching.

The singer: Billie Holiday

The singer Billie Holiday had already worked her way out of the misery of her youth in 1939. She had recorded productions with Count Basie , Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw and was considered a sales-generating jazz singer and excellent entertainment musician . At that time, the then 24-year-old had started again at Café Society; she had previously been forced to use the freight elevator at a New York hotel - significantly, the hotel was named after Abraham Lincoln . She has faced numerous forms of racism in her life . Her father died in 1937, largely because all of the area's hospitals refused to treat an African American. She said: It was n't the pneumonia that killed him, Dallas killed him.

The song Strange Fruit stands out in the Holidays repertoire. While she was known both as an elegant jazz singer and an expressive blues interpreter, she achieved world fame with Strange Fruit in particular . The public image of Billie Holidays and the song merged: she was no longer just the woman who could seduce and move her audience, she was capable of downright shaking it.

Holiday wished the last two words of the song, Bitter Crop (dt .: Angry Harvest ), as the title of her autobiography; however, the publisher was not ready for this.

The composer and lyricist: Abel Meeropol

Abel Meeropol was a Russian - Jewish teacher from the Bronx and a member of the United States Communist Party . He saw a photo of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, which he said had haunted him for days and did not let him sleep. He then wrote the poem Bitter Fruit and published it under the pseudonym Lewis Allan in New York Teacher magazine and the communist newspaper New Masses . He later rewrote the poem to be the song Strange Fruit ; Danny Mendelsohn helped him set up the melody. It was premiered by Meeropol's wife at a meeting of the New York Teachers' Union. Strange Fruit gained some popularity within the US left. Barney Josephson, the owner of Café Internationals, heard about it and introduced Meeropol and Holiday to each other. Although Meeropol later wrote other songs, including a hit for Frank Sinatra , his heart was always particularly attached to this piece. He was all the more hurt when Holiday claimed in her autobiography that Strange Fruit was written by her and her piano player Sonny White .

Café Society

The Café Society was a club of left and liberal intellectuals and New York bohemians in Greenwich Village . Although mostly visited by whites, there was a mixed crowd - it was the only New York club outside of Harlem that was open to whites and blacks at the same time. The operator, Barney Josephson, was just as enthusiastic about "racial integration" as he was of good jazz and good entertainment.

text

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
black body 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,
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh,
And 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.

The southern trees bear strange fruits,
blood on the leaves and blood on the roots.
Black body dangles in the southern wind;
Strange fruits hang from the poplars.

Idyllic scene in the magnificent south
The protruding eyes and the disfigured mouth.
Magnolia
smell , sweet and fresh, And suddenly the smell of burnt meat.

This is a fruit that will be torn by crows,
Wet with the rain, blown with the wind,
Scorched by the sun, fall from the tree,
This is a strange and bitter fruit.

performance

Billie Holiday (photography by Carl van Vechten , 1949)

Holiday was initially reluctant to include Strange Fruit in their program - the song differed too much from their usual repertoire. After the first performance, there was silence in Café Society. Only after a while did hesitant, increasing applause begin.

The versions sung up to then had either performed the poem as a left-wing battle song or a compassionate piece, often performed with excessive pathos. Billie Holiday, on the other hand, turned it into an immediate and haunting speech. Commenting on this, as a Holiday biographer commented, “With many covers, it feels like you're hearing a great performance of a great song; when Billie sang you had the feeling of standing right at the foot of the tree. ”This interpretation appealed to a far larger audience than before and managed to attract attention beyond the already interested circles. This made the horror of black and white relationships, which a large majority of the population only passively accepted, once again perceived as a social problem.

Strange Fruit became the closing song at the Society Holidays café. All lights except for a spotlight on the singer were switched off, she herself kept her eyes closed during the introduction. Immediately after the performance, she went off and disappeared. This was usually followed by silence and no further music - as a clear sign that the performance had ended.

Holiday now used the song in her repertoire as a kind of final encore: both to share it with an audience that she liked and to challenge an audience that she thought disrespected her. She wrote in her autobiography: "This song managed to separate the people who are okay from the cretins and idiots." In the southern states, which she rarely toured anyway, Holiday played the song even less because she did knew it was going to cause trouble. In Mobile , Alabama , she was chased out of town just for trying to sing the song.

Recordings

Holiday's former record company Columbia Records refused to produce Strange Fruit on record. Since the company did not issue an official statement, one can only speculate about the reason today. On the one hand, because the song would have been perceived as too politically offensive and damaging to business, especially for the white audience in the southern states, on the other hand, because it would have meant too great a stylistic break with the standard repertoire of Holiday, which largely ended typical night club music. After all, she got clearance to record the song for Commodore Records , a small New York record company.

Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit

Billie Holiday was accompanied at the session on April 20, 1939 by the trumpeter Frankie Newton and his "Café Society Band"; these included saxophonists Tab Smith , Kenneth Hollon and Stanley Payne , pianist Sonny White , guitarist Jimmy McLin , bassist John Williams and drummer Eddie Dougherty . During this session the tracks Yesterdays , Fine and Mellow and I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues were recorded, all produced by Milt Gabler .

Although the song belongs to the standard repertoire of American music history and is popular, it is seldom heard or played. In particular, the version by Billie Holiday is described by many listeners as psychologically disturbing or even physically painful. The challenge for an artist to perform the song - and thus to make a direct comparison to the Holiday versions - is considered enormous; therefore, many avoid this challenge.

Billie Holiday himself recorded the song several times: in the studio on June 7, 1956 for Verve with Tony Scott's orchestra and for British television in London in February 1959 and live on February 12, 1945 at the California Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles for Jazz at the Philharmonic and on November 1, 1951 at the “Storyville Club” in Boston .

Other famous versions of the song sang Josh White , Carmen McRae , Eartha Kitt , Cassandra Wilson , Nina Simone , Tori Amos , Pete Seeger , Diana Ross , Siouxsie and the Banshees , Mary Coughlan , UB40 , Robert Wyatt , Sting and Beth Hart . Tricky produced a remix , and Lester Bowie recorded an instrumental version with his Brass Fantasy. Issie Barratt arranged the piece for Jaqee and the Bohuslän Big Band. Samples of some of these versions were used, including by hip-hop artist Kanye West in the song Blood on the Leaves and by Mick Jenkins in Martyrs .

Joel Katz made a documentary about the song in 2002. The only humorous use of the term "Strange Fruit" can be found in the British film Still Crazy , in which aging rock stars revive their former one-hit band Strange Fruit .

effect

In its symbolic power, Strange Fruit is considered to be just as important for the civil rights movement as the campaign by Rosa Parks . Besides We Shall Overcome and perhaps Bob Dylan's The Death of Emmett Till , no other song is so interwoven with the political struggle for black equality. When it was introduced, it was celebrated as the Black Marseillaise or fought as a propaganda piece, but over the years it has been perceived more and more as over-political: as a musical demand for human dignity and justice. Angela Davis 's book: Blues Legacies and Black Feminism was particularly influential in the reception . While Holiday was often portrayed as a "mere entertainment singer" who served as the medium for the song, Davis used the background of her research to paint the picture of a confident woman who was very aware of the effects and the content of Strange Fruit . Holiday often used it purposefully. Although it was part of her standard repertoire, she varied it like no other in the way it was performed. Davis interpreted the song as instrumental in reviving the tradition of protest and resistance in African American and American music and culture. The Time Magazine called Strange Fruit 1939 Musical propaganda , but the song has named 60 years on the song of the 20th century . Strange Fruit was not wanted on radio in the US for a long time, the BBC initially refused to play the song, and the song was officially banned on South African radio during the apartheid period .

Because of its cultural and historical significance to the United States, the first recording of the song Strange Fruit , sung by Billie Holiday, was entered into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress on January 27, 2003 . The National Recording Preservation Board's justification stated: “This biting song is arguably Billie Holiday's most influential recording. It brought the subject of lynching to the broad ... audience. "

literature

  • Donald Clarke: Billie Holiday. Wishing on the moon. Munich, Piper 1995, ISBN 3-492-03756-9 (With detailed interviews from friends and acquaintances Holidays on the creation and performance)
  • Angela Yvonne Davis : Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. Vintage Books, New York 1999, ISBN 0-679-77126-3 (With most influential essay on the interpretation of the song)
  • David Margolick : Strange Fruit. Billie Holiday, Café Society and an Early Cry for Civil Rights. Running Press, Philadelphia 2000, ISBN 0-7624-0677-1 (Forewords by Hilton Als and Cassandra Wilson. With a discography of the various recordings up to 2000); New edition: Ecco, New York 2001, ISBN 0-06-095956-8
  • Billie Holiday: Lady Sings the Blues. Autobiography. Recorded by William Dufty. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-89401-110-6

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Donald Clarke: Billie Holiday. Wishing on the moon. Munich, Piper 1995, chap. 7th
  2. ^ Billie Holiday: Lady Sings the Blues. Autobiography. Recorded by William Dufty. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 1992
  3. ↑ See Studio Session # 36 New York City April 20/1939 ( Memento June 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive ).
  4. ↑ See Studio Session # 76 New York City 7 / June / 1956 ( Memento from June 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive ).
  5. ↑ See Live-Session # 66 London 23 / February / 1959 ( Memento from June 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ).
  6. ↑ See Live Session # 15 New York City 12 / February / 1945 ( Memento from June 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ).
  7. ↑ See Live Session # 33 Boston 1 / November / 1951 ( Memento from June 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ).
  8. ^ Strange Fruit at the National Recording Library. Retrieved on August 11, 2017 (English): “This searing song is arguably Billie Holiday's most influential recording. It brought the topic of lynching to the commercial record-buying public. "
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on May 28, 2004 in this version .