Strange Fruit
The Biography of a Song
Recommended by Dorian Lynskey, and 1 others. See all reviewsRanked #63 in Jazz
Recorded by jazz legend Billie Holiday in 1939, "Strange Fruit" is considered to be the first significant song of the civil rights movement and the first direct musical assault upon racial lynchings in the South. Originally sung in New York's Cafe Society, these revolutionary lyrics take on a life of their own in this revealing account of the song and the struggle it personified. Strange Fruit not only chronicles the civil rights movement from the '30s on, it examines the lives of the beleaguered Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol, the white Jewish schoolteacher and communist... more
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Dorian Lynskey Strange Fruit [first performed by Billie Holiday in 1939, condemning American racism] was the first time you had a really clear protest message in a song which was performed in nightclubs amid a set of songs which weren’t political. (Source)
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