An Analysis Of Billie Holiday's Song 'Strange Fruit'

Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” The song “Strange Fruit” has something about it that you can never fully walk away from and forget. It could be the text itself so visualizing and dramatic, or the music that adds an even more haunting effect. The performer of course is the one who gets the social message across by the way they perform and the emotions they put into the song. Billie Holiday’s version makes this song stand out even more; a person can get the chills just listening to her sing it. Any way you look at it, it’s the combined effort of all these effects to make this song as amazing as it is. To start with the text one has to go through each line and understand what the writer was trying to portray. The song was originally written
Billie Holiday is the reason that this song really took off and made people really notice it and its message. Holiday was a very popular jazz singer and song writer at the time. Her popularity with the public made this song come out of the shadows. Her first encounter with the song was at Café Society, one of the first interracial clubs in New York, this song was kind of a merger of the two groups coming together (California Newsreel, 2002). She made the song come alive to whites and blacks and from then on she knew that she wanted to record the song. Columbia Records did not like the idea of recording this controversial song so Billie went to Commodore recordings in 1939 and made the beautiful recording that is well known today. If Holiday did not persist on recording this song who knows if it would have ever made it in to the public eye the way she did. This song became a song of protest; it became a song that led other songs of protests to be made as well. Holiday’s famous jazz inspired voice brought the emotions out and had everyone else in the room feeling the haunting effect. In the newsreel it points out that Billie Holiday did not write the song but she was a great communicator of the message. Holiday did feel the effect of singing this song with the strings of racism that came with it. She could not stay in the same hotels as white performers, and had to go through the back doors of the establishments to get away from other peoples anger from her daring to sing this song. Holiday stayed strong through wanting to get her message across and kept performing Strange Fruit. If it wasn’t for Billie Holiday finding this song and having the need to have it performed and recorded it might not have as much popularity and a spot in