Billie Holiday: Strange Fruit
“Strange Fruit” is a staggering protest song most famously sung by Billie Holiday. She first performed it publicly in 1939. Afterwards, she insisted on ending all of her live performances with it. Almost inevitably, she would break down during her vocal delivery.
It was first a poem by a Jewish high-school teacher from the Bronx, about the lynching of two black men. He published under the pen name Lewis Allan.
Her record label, Columbia, refused to record it, out of fear of harsh back-lash from the South. Arrangements thus had to be made with an alternate label, Commodore.
Just as the song was about to commence in her live performances, waiters would stop serving, the club lights would be turned off, and a single pin spotlight would illuminate Holiday. During the musical introduction, Holiday would stand with eyes closed, as if to evoke a prayer.
In October 1939, Samuel Grafton of The New York Post described “Strange Fruit”: “If the anger of the exploited ever mounts high enough in the South, it now has its Marseillaise.”
In December, 1999, Time magazine labelled it the song of the century.
Let this post be a reminder of the history of race-relations in the United States.
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Mark,
Raw notes of Billie Holiday’s life:
“Born Baltimore, 1915. Dirt-poor, raped at 11, moved with mother, Sadie, to New York, where both worked in a whorehouse. Began early to entertain in Harlem hangouts, influenced by Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith. Taken up by big bands, black and white (Benny Goodman, Count Basie), she toured for years. Lived more or less regularly with Sadie, on whom she doted, until Sadie died in 1945, leaving her bereft and with no further firm attachment. Slept around, misused by lovers, managers and two husbands, most of whom drained her financially and morally, in return for which she was left with drugs and drink.”
Is the artistry of Billie Holiday conceivable without the torturous input of her life? I hardly think so. Yet, her life contradicts the formalisms we are taught and led to believe by the Church.
Here’s a question for you: How does God relate to his artists? Does he have a special charism for them? What role do they play in his Providential Design? How are we called upon to relate to them? What can they teach us? How are we to judge their sins? Can we reject the sin of the artist without rejecting both the artist and the artist’s artistry? No! If we try to do so, we will destroy access to the causal origins of the artistry and end up trivializing the artist’s creation.
The lived experience of Billie Holiday unmasks the depth of our yearning for love. It sheds light on the mystery of our own quest. But how does the sinner and the saint relate in Billie Holiday’s life. How do they relate in each of our lives? What is the nature of the dialectic they engender? How is this dialectic to be reconciled? Does the saint exclude the sinner, or the sinner the saint? Is the person to be bifurcated, subject to the dualism of either/or?
What does it mean to be reconciled? If there is reconciliation, can anything be lost? Doesn’t reconciliation mean that all is elevated?