'Strange Fruit': The Timely Return of One of America's Most Powerful Protest Songs

[Nevilledog]

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/strange-fruit-history-legacy-1030942/


Last year, North Carolina rapper Rapsody was searching for an introductory track for her new album, Eve, a concept LP about the history and power of black women. Her producer suggested a song she didn’t know well: Nina Simone’s 1965 version of “Strange Fruit.” A concise but graphic evocation of a Southern lynching, “Strange Fruit” was one of America’s earliest and most shocking protest songs, drawing attention to the thousands of acts of racist terrorism against black people in this country’s history. “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,” went one of its verses.

“As soon as I heard it, I knew that was the intro,” says Rapsody, who used the sample as the basis for her song “Nina.” “I’ve always been drawn to hearing about that part of our history, and I’ve been drawn to artists who speak to the reality of the times we live in. And even 80 years later, that song still speaks to the times. You don’t need more than 91 words. What else needs to be said?”

This year, with the return of Black Lives Matter protests to national headlines, a song written just over 80 years ago has taken on startling new relevance. In the first six months of this year, Billie Holiday’s 1939 recording of “Strange Fruit” — the first and most famous version of the song — was streamed more than 2 million times, according to Alpha Data, the data-analytics provider that powers the Rolling Stone Charts. On his SiriusXM show last month, Bruce Springsteen included “Strange Fruit” on his playlist of protest songs, and in an interview called it “just an epic piece of music that was so far ahead of its time. It still strikes a deep, deep, deep nerve in the conversation of today.”

Veteran R&B singer Bettye LaVette moved up the release of her new cover of “Strange Fruit” after the police killing of George Floyd. “I watch the news all day long, and the language started to change from ‘unarmed black man’ to ‘lynching,'” she told RS last month. “So I called the [record] company and told them that it seemed like we keep telling this story over and over and over.”

*snip*

[malaise]

1. I know every word of that song

A sad but important classic

[CaptYossarian]

2. Katey Sagal's version is on my iPod.

Hearing a white person do it should scare the hell out of the rednecks.

The slide guitar seems to cry and moan as if it's suffering the pain.

[Withywindle]

3. That song led to Billie Holiday's death

It angered a racist Federal agent so much, he was determined to destroy her after that. It's connected to the deeply racist ideology behind the War on Drugs too.

"One individual who was determined to silence Holiday was Federal Bureau of Narcotics commissioner Harry Anslinger. A known racist, Anslinger believed that drugs caused black people to overstep their boundaries in American society and that black jazz singers — who smoked marijuana — created the devil's music."

"When Anslinger forbid Holiday to perform "Strange Fruit," she refused, causing him to devise a plan to destroy her. Knowing that Holiday was a drug user, he had some of his men frame her by selling her heroin. When she was caught using the drug, she was thrown into prison for the next year and a half.

Upon Holiday's release in 1948, federal authorities refused to reissue her cabaret performer’s license. Her nightclub days, which she loved so much, were over."

...

"Still bent on ruining the singer, Anslinger had his men go to the hospital and handcuff her to her bed. Although Holiday had been showing gradual signs of recovery, Anslinger's men forbid doctors to offer her further treatment. She died within days."

https://www.biography.com/news/billie-holiday-strange-fruit


She was lynched too, just by a different method.