Bitt-er Fruit (I listened to Billie Holiday writing this!)

Heard melodies are sweet, but

those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye

with soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but,

more endear’d,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone;

-Ode on a Grecian Urn, John Keats

Listening to Billie Holiday for the first time is an experience unmatched – almost like the discovering of a whole new world – one of melancholia and grandeur. I remember unassumingly clicking upon a Chanel ad as a precocious teen and how her voice, and melody unfurled infront of me in its golden splendour:

I’m a fool to love you.

Billie Holiday was known to be in an abusive relationship with her producer Mckay (a junkie, wifebeater, and a pimp), whom this melancholia could very well be directed towards. That admission of foolishness and the state of being weak, alongside the riveting strength of her voice, does something to music not easily sought. It also, to the listener, provides the crazy admonition that seeing injustices comes hard. 1

We see more of that refusal and comfort in Strange Fruit, which I will avail the pleasure of writing about within this blog.

The mural attached above is of a lynch mob, namely the lynch mob of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. The bulging eyes and twisted mouth described in Strange Fruit, is here being gawked at, celebrated, and made into spectacle. For the purposes of this blog, I would like to narrate their story. Thomas was an 18 year old boy working at a foundry, and Abram was a 19 year old shoeshine boy. They were charged with their lynching indictment, as black men usually were, for the alleged rape of a white woman in Marion, Indiana. When the boys were arrested, the Marion Police Chief Campbell hung Abram’s bloody shirt outside the cell as a flag. By evening the crowd had gathered, and was demanding that Sheriff Campbell turn the accused boys over to them. The unspeakable then took place. 2

The boys were of course wrongly accused, and the white victim in question withdrew her allegations of rape. But the photo had been circulated. The spectacle had been unleashed. And Abel Meeropool, a white Jewish schoolteacher in the Bronx, set to write his poem Strange Fruit. There was in the spectacle of lynching, the need to critically examine, because the humanity of the bodies being abused was discarded the moment the noose took high. Interestingly enough, Strange Fruit was written just four days before Kristalnachtt. Meeropool, with a deep commitment to political consciousness 3 aimed to decries this practice and the indignity it left bodies in, for the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, as Meeropool puts it. I’d like to mention a Black protest song titled “Sistren an’ Brethren,” which has similar imagery and may have suggested to Meeropol the conceit for “Strange Fruit”:

Yo’ head ‘tain’ no apple Fo’ danglin’ from a tree, Yo’ body no carcass for barbacuin’ on a spree4

Billie didn’t credit Meeropool for the song, however, and rightfully so. She made it into a song of her own entirely, making her life end on a witchhunt which was promulgated by her refusal to stop singing about lynching. Billie used, as Samuel Perry puts it, ekphrasis, i.e. the point at which rhetorical and poetic theory intersect in a way that puts language at the service of vision. This is done by Keats above as well, when paying ode to the Grecian Urn. The black body is one that deserves to be elevated by vision, by melody, by diction. It deserves to be a Grecian Urn in its own right.

Bitt-er

See how Billie Holiday hangs onto the word when singing, and you will witness her power, witness her pain. Billie Holiday meanders around syllables, cracking and creaking upon lines at her will. It is not easy to sing about burning flesh, and tap into such gory detail, especially not the burning flesh of your own people, but Billie incorporates her mystical powers to transport her listeners into the enveloping mist of the world of her song.

The song is as politically charged as you would imagine and a step beyond, with its communist roots through Meeropole, there are striking commentaries on black bodies being used for profit, and degraded in the process, the strange and bitter crop upholding the gallant South. This was more than a folk song, it was an indictment, it was a cry for war.

I use this as a piece of media for this course as it still has immense potency for me even with its incredibly specific history (hint: specificity is universality). I think it is important to examine how a piece of art can both be more than the sum of it's parts and also be irrevocably defined by them. And Strange Fruit is an example close to my heart.

References:

1. “The same woman who was so strong, who could see so clearly the injustices in our culture, just kept hooking up with the wrong guy,” Parks said. “But I guess that’s how it always is. Great people do great things, but then at home, they’re like —” and here the writer screamed – Robert Ito.

2. If you do wish to look into the details of the lynching (recorded on video) you could follow this link 

3. Interesting once again to note, how historically oppressed communities have the writ to form powerful alliances

4. Baker, Nancy Kovaleff. “Abel Meeropol (a.k.a. Lewis Allan): Political Commentator and Social Conscience.” American Music, vol. 20, no. 1, 2002, pp. 25–79. JSTOR