STRANGE
FRUIT
BILLIE
HOLIDAY
SONGWRITER:
LEWIS ALLAN
COUNTRY: U.
S. A.
ALBUM: STRANGE
FRUIT
LABEL: ATLANTIC
RECORDS
GENRE: JAZZ
YEAR: 1972
Eleanora Fagan (April 7,
1915 – July 17, 1959), better known as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz musician
and singer-songwriter with a career spanning nearly thirty years. Nicknamed
"Lady Day" by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had
a seminal influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly
inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing
and tempo. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills,
which made up for her limited range and lack of formal music education.
After a turbulent
childhood, Holiday began singing in nightclubs in Harlem, where she was heard
by the producer John Hammond, who commended her voice. She signed a recording
contract with Brunswick Records in 1935. Collaborations with Teddy Wilson yielded
the hit "What a Little Moonlight Can Do", which became a jazz
standard. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success on
labels such as Columbia Records and Decca Records. By the late 1940s, however, she
was beset with legal troubles and drug abuse. After a
short prison sentence, she performed at a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall,
but her reputation deteriorated because of her drug and alcohol problems.
Strange Fruit" is a
song performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who first sang and recorded it
in 1939. Written by teacher Abel Meeropol as a poem and published in 1937, it
protested American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans. Such
lynchings had reached a peak in the South at the turn of the century, but
continued there and in other regions of the United States. According to the Tuskegee
Institute, 1,953 Americans were murdered by lynching, about three quarters of
them black. The lyrics are an extended metaphor linking a tree’s fruit with
lynching victims. Meeropol set it to music and, with his wife and the singer Laura
Duncan, performed it as a protest song in New York City venues in the late
1930s, including Madison Square Garden.
The song continues to be
covered by numerous artists, including Nina Simone, UB40, Jeff Buckley, Siouxsie
and the Banshees and Dee Dee Bridgewater and has inspired novels, other poems,
and other creative works. In 1978, Holiday's version of the song was inducted
into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It was also included in the list of Songs of the
Century, by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for
the Arts. Lyricist E. Y. Harburg referred to the song as a "historical document".
It was also dubbed, "a declaration of war... the beginning of the civil
rights movement" by record producer Ahmet Ertegun.
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and 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,
Scent
of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then
the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here
is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For
the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For
the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Postagens
