STRANGE FRUIT
(Lyrics: Lewis Allan)
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.
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BACKGROUND INFO
The anti-lynching poem "Strange Fruit" was written by Abel
Meeropol (1903 - 1986), a Jewish high-school teacher from the Bronx best
known under his pseudonym Lewis Allan. He subsequently set the poem to
music; it was famously performed by Billie Holiday.
Meeropol wrote "Strange Fruit" to express his horror at lynchings
after seeing a photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith
in Marion, Indiana. He published the poem in 1937 in The New York Teacher
magazine.
I was both shocked and impressed when I first read this haunting
plea for civil rights a couple of months ago. However, since I did not
like the Billy Holiday version of the song (no offence intended - it is
just that I am not into all that jazz) I wrote my own (folk rock) version
of the poem, took my BOSS BR 1200 Digital Recording Studio which I had
just acquired, fiddled around a bit and recorded all the parts.
My song version of the poem can also be found on
youtube (not in
stereo, though)
*
- The solo in the middle was supposed to be played with a fiddle by
a friend of mine. However, since she was not available at the time, I
suddenly thought, why not try my 12-string guitar for a change?
- The drums break in the last verse happened by mistake: I was not
too familiar with the Boss BR 1200 studio, so I inadvertently
deleted some drum patterns; then it suddenly hit me: why not actually
leave those bars free of drums, thus making the song more interesting?
- At first I intended to use lots of lynching photographs for the
video. However, most of those photos available are so horrible that I
refrained from doing so. Instead, I tried to also incorporate photos
which are supposed to express something upbeat or optimistic:
a. the swamp photo parallel to the solo in the middle
b. the Magnolia photo at the end of the song
- interesting background info can be found in this
youtube video
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