STRANGE FRUIT – Song by Billie Holiday

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

I’m not really sure if I 'like' this song but it certainly made me feel bad when I read it, so I guess that makes it effective.This is a song that was made famous when Billie Holiday sang it in 1939 (type ‘Strange Fruit Billie Holiday’ in Google and you can watch her sing it on You tube). It’s about the lynching of black people by the Ku Klux Klan in America in the 1920’s. It is a protest song against racism and has a very strong message that shocks the audience. The fruit on the trees in the farming areas of the South where the worst lynching happened is used as a metaphor for black people hanging from them. I think this is really shocking and makes their lives seem so unimportant. The bodies are left for ‘the crows to pluck’, they are left ‘to rot’ and ‘to drop’, just like fruit that has been left on the tree. The last word ‘crop’ is the most shocking because I think it is saying that this happened to lots of black people. Awful images like ‘bulging eyes’ and ‘burning flesh’ add to the horror and the suffering of these black people. TECHNIQUES WE COULD BORROW FOR OUR WORK: giving a strong message about something /using emotional language /metaphors

Alex Eburne