Noise du Jour: “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holliday

This is music, at its rawest, most powerful, most visceral. Billie Holliday, her face racked with passion, describing the blue, black, purple faces of lynched corpses, the weight of their bruised bodies held up by shattered necks creaking the cheap cord rope as they sway under a tree in the wind. “Strange Fruits” was originally written by a Jewish scoolteacher who witnessed the lynching of two black men and Holliday reportedly performed the song in fear that she was describing her own end. The Wikipedia entry is very informative, for a change.

Strange Fruit [YouTube]