STRANGE FRUIT -------------
'Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black body swinging in the souther breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees'
Abel Meeropol, "Strange Fruit"
Documentarian Joel Katz traces the roots of the protest song popularized by Billy Holiday in 1939, "Strange Fruit."
In a one hour running time, Katz explores how a white Jewish schoolteacher came to write the song which Holiday claimed, incorrectly, was written for her and which was later adopted by the Civil Rights movement. "Strange Fruit" combines elements of the biopic with an exploration of the birth of New York's jazz clubs and the history of Southern lynching. This film would make a terrific companion piece to "Amandla!," the documentary about Apartheid protest music or "The Murder of Emmet Til," which gives an account of the murder of a young black boy in the south which may have been the event which sparked the Civil Rights movement.
Abel Meeropol, who is also known as the man who adopted the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg after their execution, originally wrote the lyrics as a poem, "Bitter Fruit," for a teachers' union. The Tin Pan Alley movement, where Black music was being produced by white artists like Irving Berlin and George Gershwin, gave him the idea to set the words to music. Billy Holiday, who was currently a sensation at New York club Cafe Society ('the wrong place for the right people'), was approached to record the song and it became her lynch pin, even after having been recorded by many other artists, Nina Simone and Carmen McRae included. Its lyrics were read at Congress in support of Federal anti-lynching legislation which failed to pass in the years following WWII, then became a backdrop for the Civil Rights movement, resurfaced in the 1970s for 'Rock Against Racism' and was played at Meeropol's funeral in 1986.
Katz uses archival footage, horrifying documents of lynchings, still photographs and charming old reel-to-reel recordings of Meeropol entertaining his children to create his song history, but most powerful of all is the song itself. Pete Seeger states 'sometimes a short song all of a few minutes can have as much impact as a long novel,' which Katz vividly portrays with his smooth cutting among different singers performing the song. Although Holiday is presented as unfairly claiming more than her due for the song's genesis, old BBC footage of her singing makes a powerful statement.
When Katz moves into the present day at the end of his film, its focus is diffused, but he rebounds with a sharp observation by Meeropol's son, who states that 'until the last racist is dead, "Strange Fruit" is relevant.'
B
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