"Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday!

After all Sixty-Four songs (culled from nearly 300) duked it out tournament style over the past few weeks, last night we crowned her signature song which so bravely illuminated the horrors of lynchings, our SAD, SAD Champion, the Ultimate in Misery, which unfortunately and VERY , VERY Sadly, still holds incredible relevance today . . .

Listen to the song and review the Lyrics here: http://kboo.fm/blog/56789

Docs sampled on air:

Strange Fruit -The story behind "The Song of the Century" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZUoYgPe1Y4

Strange Fruit: History of Anti-Lynching Song (Democracy Now!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojKKEZ-_61g

Strange Fruit: Anniversary Of A Lynching (NPR) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129025516

“Strange Fruit”

Billie Holiday’s signature song, which arose from a poem in the aftermath of gruesome lynchings, helpped spark the Civil Rights movement and became a song that sadly still holds relevance today.



"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.

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.