Billie Holiday - Strange fruit

Billie sings with her heart.

Lyrics (Abel Meeropol):

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.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Billie
• Holiday
• jazz
• blues
• live
• strange
• fruit
• against
• racism

[Berrylibre18]

Here's to you, Troy Davis.

[FrauleinGee]

A chillingly beautiful anti-racism anthem. We do not need any more strange fruit anywhere in the world.

[espartano132]

In loving memory of Troy Anthony Davis.

[FelixRMP]

I love Billie, but You guys need to hear this song in the Nina Simone's voice. That is just remarkable

[sesuncedu]

@cizbarca - The song is about lynching in the Jim Crow era (post-Reconstruction,pre-Civil Rights movement). The lyrics were written in 1937 by Abel Meeropol, and first published as a poem. The image that drove them was a photo of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in 1930, in Indiana (lynchings were not confined to the South; 90% were, 80% of the victims were Black). There's a good study guide at shmoop dot com slash strange-fruit.

[koolerz28]

We listen to this in history class 3

[JadedRuby]

I absolutely LOVE Billie Holiday and followed Gloomy Sunday here. But Holy Moly, this is horrifying! I had a German Aunt who was sent to to jail in Biloxi, in the late 1940's because she sat in the "wrong" section of the bus. She didn't speak English, but the bus driver thought she was getting fresh and she was pregnant at the time and just wanted to sit down. Apparently this was no good....This is a good reminder of a nightmare and a travesty of American history that should never be forgotten.

[forgetfullandstuff]

So chilling.

[cizbarca]

Thankkk Yoouu

[megadork456]

@cizbarca

The strange furit are black men, lynched up in trees by nooses in a racist society. Fruit for the crows to pluck at and the sun to rot away, fruit with bloody juice, bulging eyes, mouths twisted in unendurable agony, the pretty smell of magnolia becoming foul with the overbearing stench of the burning flesh of a black man. A "pastoral" scene of a "gallant" South.

[cizbarca]

I probably sound like a retard but can someone explains this to me; I can tell it is about segregation, slavery,and the death of many blacks but what else