Today's encore selection -- Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song by David
Margolick. Billie Holiday (1915-1959), considered by some to be the
greatest of the female jazz vocalists, introduced 'Strange Fruit', a
song about lynching, into a world of songs about love and romance:
"A few years back, Q,
a British music publication, named 'Strange Fruit' one of 'the ten
songs that actually changed the world.' Like any revolutionary act, the
song initially encountered great resistance. Holiday and the black
folksinger Josh White, who began performing it a few years after Holiday
first did [in 1939], were abused, sometimes physically, by irate
nightclub patrons -- 'crackers' as Holiday called them. Columbia
Records, Holiday's label in the late 1930s, refused to record it. ...
'Strange Fruit' marked a watershed, praised by some, lamented by others,
in Holiday's evolution from exuberant jazz singer to chanteuse of
lovelorn pain and loneliness. Once Holiday added it to her repertoire,
some of its sadness seemed to cling to her; as she deteriorated
physically, the song took on new poignancy and immediacy. ...
"Lynchings
-- during which blacks were murdered with unspeakable brutality, often
in a carnival-like atmosphere, and then, with the acquiescence if not
the complicity of local authorities, hung from trees for all to see --
were rampant in the South following the Civil War and for many years
thereafter. According to figures kept by the Tuskegee Institute --
conservative figures -- between 1889 and 1940, 3,833 people were
lynched; ninety percent of them were murdered in the South, and
four-fifths of them were black. Lynchings tended to occur in poor, small
towns -- often taking the place the famed newspaper columnist H.L.
Mencken once said, 'of the merry-go-round, the theater, the symphony
orchestra.' ... And they were meted out for a host of alleged offenses
-- not just for murder, theft and rape, but for insulting a white
person, boasting, swearing or buying a car. In some instances, it was no
infraction at all; it was just time to remind 'uppity' blacks to stay
in their place. ...
"The
night that she first sang 'Strange Fruit' [at Cafe Society in New York]
'there wasn't even a patter of applause when I finished,' she later
wrote in her autobiography. 'Then a lone person began to clap nervously.
Then, suddenly, everybody was clapping.' The applause grew louder and a
bit less tentative as 'Strange Fruit' became a nightly ritual for
Holiday, then one of her most successful records, then one of her
signature songs, at least in those places where it was safe to perform."
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Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, em viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas.
O que é este blog?
Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.
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