Strange Fruit

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Recommended: African American influence on American music

The song “Strange Fruit” was a landmark song at the time as it was a call to attention of the racial segregation and the injustices committed in not only the south but all across the Unites States. This song is best known as being performed by Billie Holiday in 1939. However, it has more history to it than that. The song was originally written as a protest poem by Jewish high school teacher Abel Meeropol (Holiday). He wrote it as a poem protesting the racism in America and specifically the lynching of African Americans in the south. The lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in 1930 influenced Meeropol in writing this poem which was originally titled “Bitter Fruit” published in The New York Teacher in 1937 (Holiday). How the song got to Holiday …show more content…

Using the sample by Nina Simone on his track took it to another place, and put listeners into a different mindset with it. He could have referenced the poem in the song or titled it Strange Fruit, but having the opening of the song be the first lines of the poem takes it into a different space. Any song that has a sample of strange fruit or references it is normally a song discussing some form of racial injustice. West took this song and discussed New Age racial injustice and told a story from his own perspective. He uses Nina Simone’s cover of the song instead of Billie Holidays version of it as Nina Simone was more well known for her civil rights anthems. “Anthems as "Mississippi Goddam," "Old Jim Crow" and "I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free" (Kaufman). Everything that West says in this song draws some parallels to “Strange Fruit”. Blood on The Leaves is talking about a past relationship, but some of the lyrics can be related to feeling like a slave in the eyes of the media and New Age Lynch Mobs. Kanye says in the beginning “And all I want is what I can’t buy now”. As someone who is as wealthy as he is, the thought that he cannot purchase something shows that it isn’t something you can purchase with money, but that it is something that he wants, but will never be able to have because of the situation he is in now. He has become a

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