On Music

I was taking the History of Jazz course at WSU last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. However, the professor once noted in passing that jazz musicians--especially the non-contemporary ones--often strayed away from politics in their music. There are a few exceptions to this trend, the most known of which are shocking in their quiet power.

Billie Holiday is considered one of the mothers of jazz vocalists, and is remembered for her unique tone and general disregard for traditional standards of singing. However, her approach to song proved to be just the release that the early jazz age sought. Although wildly popular, this was the 1930's in the east and south of the United States. Holiday could only perform in integrated clubs and theaters, and the dominant US society was seemingly content with a slave-free country with a maladjusted approach to equality. Holiday had a song called "Strange Fruit," the lyrics of which were based on a lynching poem written by a schoolteacher in the Bronx. She first performed it in 1939 at a club, and it quickly became her most popular--and arguably powerful--song.
***
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.
***
The author of the poem is said to be inspired by this picture, in which the hanging Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp are surrounded by gleeful figures. Within the poem itself is a series of ironies which heighten the mournful tone; the pastoral scene is hardly pastoral--rather, it is marked by grotesque images of strangulation. Magnolias, known as beautiful flowering trees of the south, are beset by burning bodies. The 'strange fruits'--the bodies of the lynched men--are described as decrepit and rotting. The hundreds of years of slavery in fields is implied by describing such men as strange fruit. Now their bodies are still a commodity, but instead of gatherers they are unwilling entertainers killed for fun.
Part of the reason Holiday was loved by audiences is through her delivery; she is often seen arcing her head back or smiling broadly during a performance, reflecting the tone of her piece. She put her own personality into her music, and is respected throughout the jazz community as a musician who had "soul." "Strange Fruit" is a chilling contrast to her often-excited delivery; she moves from mournful to disgusted, reflecting in her voice the images described. This was no entertaining gimmick--Billie Holiday was breaking into music a taboo reality of being considered the "other." The fervor of her words when performing this piece call to an unjust truth which she and many other artists of the time struggled to engage.