In no particular order some of my favourite music moments. No29 Strange Fruit By Billie Holliday.
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.
So begins one of the most powerful anti-racism anthems, sung by perhaps the greatest singer to ever grace a stage.
First published as a poem “Bitter Fruit” by a teacher Abel Meeropol, who later set it to music, Strange Fruit was originally recorded by Holliday in 1939.
It’s a fierce and satirical protest against the lynchings of black people in the Deep South, which reached their peak at the turn of the 20th century, but were still prevalent at the time this song was released.
Although she initially struggled to find a label brave enough to record and distribute the record, Commodore leventually stepped up to the plate and, in time, the record sold more than a million copies, making it Holliday’s biggest selling record.
