Strange Fruit Song

Barney josephson the owner of the café society had asked the waiters to stop serving drinks and in the darkened room a single spotlight projected a strange light on the singer s black hair a magnolia set in her hair as the bodies of the two men swung from the ghostly branch of a song.
Strange fruit song. Strange fruit was not the first popular song to deal with race. It protests the lynching of black americans with lyrics that compare the victims to the fruit of trees such lynchings had reached a peak in the southern united states at the turn of the 20th century and the great majority of victims were black. Nina simone strange fruit. 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. The timely return of one of america s most powerful protest songs recorded by billie holiday and nina simone sampled by kanye west and rapsody and streamed by the millions. Southern trees bear a 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. From live at sin é bonus dvd arguably as iconoclastic a singer as holiday or simone jeff buckley heads into blues territory setting up his vocals with a long tender.
Fats waller s black and blue had come out 10 years earlier and lead belly recorded the bourgeois blues in the same month holiday. Billie sings with her heart. Strange fruit is a song recorded by billie holiday in 1939 written by abel meeropol and published in 1937. The music was climbing up from their heels like a cramp of truth.