Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit

Tomorrow's my jazz midterm and I have to know 8 songs that Mr. Harrison told us to listen to. I started listening to them probably last week or something, and only liked the jazzy songs among them. I disliked Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit because it was just so.......I don't know how to describe. Just not some song that I liked.

Until just now when I played the list again and I listened more intently to the lyrics, ah, then the song struck a chord in me.

It's an awfully sad song.



You really ought to listen to it.

It is actually a poem written by Lewis Allen.

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.


You can read more about the story behind this here.

And you hear Billie Holiday's voice which got so intriguing it really touched me.