Strange Fruit
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Blood on the leaves
And blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
—Strange Fruit, sung by Billie Holiday, 1939
arsip tempo : 178036513317.
MUSIC is politics when deafness is power. Billie Holiday’s entire life, her childhood, her poverty, her husky voice, her musical phrasing, her drugs, her cancer, her memories of her mother who became a prostitute and the father she never knew (who is said to have died without treatment because he was a ‘negro’)—were formed from a state of oppression like a neck under a boot.
The neck of a black. The boot of a white. And n
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