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.

Missing out

On Monday I already missed out on the American Idol tour because it's midterm week (like so what? HAHA) and I can't really get anyone to go with me. Though I had an essay to submit on Tuesday.

Tonight Wynton Marsalis will perform at the Hollywood Bowl with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

At Hollywood Bowl there are USD 1 tickets that you can buy (way in advance) and sit righhhht at the far end. And if the front seats aren't occupied you can just move up and get better seats for USD 1. Just one buck.

But of course, such tickets get sold out very fast.

When I first came here and did some research the tickets were already sold out and the cheapest left were USD 30 seats. Till now it's still the USD 30 seats. I don't mind paying USD 30 since it's Wynton Marsalis, but being USD 30 it's harder to get someone to go with you =( I'm so sad. I wanna go!!!

So now I'm gonna miss out on another concert. I have the jazz midterm test tmr anyway.

But I need to watch a jazz concert to do the concert report for the jazz module.

Darn.

S/U?

Dai Jing, Chui Ying and Ivan have got midterm for their Understanding Relationships module tomorrow.

They're like really studying damn hard for it. Ivan is already re-reading his notes. =S

It's really pass/fail for it and looking at them studying makes me feel very pressurized.

I have midterm for my jazz on Thursday and I think I'm still slacking. Either I'm really complacent or I'm really slacking. I was practising guitar just now and I'm going to do that after I bathe later on.

I have to remember facts from five chapters of the jazz textbook. The facts are really....factual -_- soooo many things to know, identify, and remember. I actually still can't really differentiate between swing, ragtime and jazz. One leads to the other but the differences are rather vague to me. I think I should go back to reading the text after practising a bit more guitar later. The midterm consists of 50 questions, there are MCQs and True-False and matching -> meaning I match the name of the jazz musician to the instrument they play or something like that. I have to be able to identify eight jazz songs that we were told to listen to, and know who composed what. Wa, I can't remember if you force me to. Of the eight I've heard none of them before I came here. HAHA. But most of them are nice. Especially Ella Fitzgerald's A-tisket, A-tasket. Very cute.

The digital reserves' down now, I can't listen to the music. =(

I'm most worried about the part that asks us to differentiate between the three music styles. *gasp*

Though this is S/U I sort of still wanna do well. Like prove to myself that I can do something well academically at least. HAHA. Can't make it at math so gotta find other sources to make me have confidence in myself.

Days 18-20, 06-08072008, Los Angeles

On Sunday the 6th we didn't go out, because we decided that we spent too much money and too much time and this week is midterm week so we all gotta stay home and study study study.

I did mostly jazz today. So much to read.

Yesterday, Monday the 7th we didn't go out too. There was class at 10 in the morning but guess what I overslept.

I overslept!! Bah! How can that happen to me even here T_T

So I went for the afternoon session's and didn't miss out on anything much. We started on Andres Segoria's Valse.

I spent my time finishing up on the reading and completed my jazz essay. My laptop seems to be getting old =( It's got a problem I don't know how to solve and it happened twice today already. The first time it happened yesterday I was working on my essay. Thank goodness only a sentence didn't get saved.


I freaked out 'cos it said 'dump of physical memory'. I don't know what it meant.

When I restarted my comp and sent the error report I got to this page.


Does anyone know how to help? =(

And today I went for jazz class, tried the Jamba Juice at Ackerman Union (UCLA's YIH) that people queued for and said that it's nice. It's not bad la. Just very expensive. USD 4.10 for a cup of blended yogurt juice. But the cup was huge. I drank all the way from school to the apartment and only finished like one-fifth of it.


It is really uncomfortable when you have to worry that your computer will crash again while using it. Hmmph. =(

But guess what. I finally managed to catch up with my blogging!