Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit PDF Author: David Margolick
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781841951133
Category : History and criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
An exploration of the story of a song that foretold a movement, and the lady who dared to sing it. The powerful, evocative lyrics of Strange Fruit - written by a Jewish communist schoolteacher - portray the lynching of a black man in the South. In 1939, its performance sparked controversy (and sometimes violence) wherever Billie Holiday went. Not until 16 years later did Rosa Parks refuse to yield her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Yet Strange Fruit lived on, and in this work David Margolick chronicles its effect on those who experienced it first-hand: musicians, artists, journalists, intellectuals, students, budding activists, and even the waitresses and bartenders who worked the clubs.

Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit PDF Author: David Margolick
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781841951133
Category : History and criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Get Book Here

Book Description
An exploration of the story of a song that foretold a movement, and the lady who dared to sing it. The powerful, evocative lyrics of Strange Fruit - written by a Jewish communist schoolteacher - portray the lynching of a black man in the South. In 1939, its performance sparked controversy (and sometimes violence) wherever Billie Holiday went. Not until 16 years later did Rosa Parks refuse to yield her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Yet Strange Fruit lived on, and in this work David Margolick chronicles its effect on those who experienced it first-hand: musicians, artists, journalists, intellectuals, students, budding activists, and even the waitresses and bartenders who worked the clubs.

Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit PDF Author: Gary Golio
Publisher: Millbrook Press (Tm)
ISBN: 1467751235
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
Tells the story of how Billie Holiday and songwriter Abel Meeropol combined their talents to create "Strange Fruit," the iconic protest song that brought attention to lynching and racism in America.

Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit PDF Author: David Margolick
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060959568
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
Recorded by jazz legend Billie Holiday in 1939, "Strange Fruit" is considered to be the first significant song of the civil rights movement and the first direct musical assault upon racial lynchings in the South. Originally sung in New York's Cafe Society, these revolutionary lyrics take on a life of their own in this revealing account of the song and the struggle it personified. Strange Fruit not only chronicles the civil rights movement from the '30s on, it examines the lives of the beleaguered Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol, the white Jewish schoolteacher and communist sympathizer who wrote the song that would have an impact on generations of fans, black and white, unknown and famous, including performers Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, and Sting.

Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit PDF Author: Gary Golio
Publisher: Millbrook Press ™
ISBN: 1512438634
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 43

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Book Description
The audience was completely silent the first time Billie Holiday performed a song called "Strange Fruit." In the 1930s, Billie was known as a performer of jazz and blues music, but this song wasn't either of those things. It was a song about injustice, and it would change her life forever. Discover how two outsiders—Billie Holiday, a young black woman raised in poverty, and Abel Meeropol, the son of Jewish immigrants—combined their talents to create a song that challenged racism and paved the way for the Civil Rights movement.

Jazz Diplomacy

Jazz Diplomacy PDF Author: Lisa E. Davenport
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1604733446
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Jazz as an instrument of global diplomacy transformed superpower relations in the Cold War era and reshaped democracy's image worldwide. Lisa E. Davenport tells the story of America's program of jazz diplomacy practiced in the Soviet Union and other regions of the world from 1954 to 1968. Jazz music and jazz musicians seemed an ideal card to play in diminishing the credibility and appeal of Soviet communism in the Eastern bloc and beyond. Government-funded musical junkets by such jazz masters as Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and Benny Goodman dramatically influenced perceptions of the U.S. and its capitalist brand of democracy while easing political tensions in the midst of critical Cold War crises. This book shows how, when coping with foreign questions about desegregation, the dispute over the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, jazz players and their handlers wrestled with the inequalities of race and the emergence of class conflict while promoting America in a global context. And, as jazz musicians are wont to do, many of these ambassadors riffed off script when the opportunity arose. Jazz Diplomacy argues that this musical method of winning hearts and minds often transcended economic and strategic priorities. Even so, the goal of containing communism remained paramount, and it prevailed over America's policy of redefining relations with emerging new nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

33 Revolutions Per Minute

33 Revolutions Per Minute PDF Author: Dorian Lynskey
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780571241354
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 843

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Book Description
33 Revolutions Per Minute tracks the turbulent relationship between popular music and politics, through 33 pivotal songs that span seven decades and four continents, from Billie Holiday singing 'Strange Fruit' to Green Day raging against the Iraq war. Dorian Lynskey explores the individuals, ideas and events behind each song, showing how protest music has soundtracked and informed social change since the 1930s. Through the work of such artists as Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Fela Kuti, The Clash, Public Enemy and Gil Scott Heron, Lynskey examines how music has engaged with racial unrest, nuclear paranoia, apartheid, war, poverty and oppression, offering hope, stirring anger, inciting action and producing songs which continue to resonate years down the line.

Gender and Lynching

Gender and Lynching PDF Author: Evelyn M. Simien
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137001224
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
The authors probe the reasons and circumstances surrounding the death and torture of African American female victims, relying on such methodological approaches as comparative historical work, content and media analysis, as well as literary criticism.

Jews and Jazz

Jews and Jazz PDF Author: Charles B Hersch
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317270398
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Jews and Jazz: Improvising Ethnicity explores the meaning of Jewish involvement in the world of American jazz. It focuses on the ways prominent jazz musicians like Stan Getz, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Lee Konitz, Dave Liebman, Michael Brecker, and Red Rodney have engaged with jazz in order to explore and construct ethnic identities. The author looks at Jewish identity through jazz in the context of the surrounding American culture, believing that American Jews have used jazz to construct three kinds of identities: to become more American, to emphasize their minority outsider status, and to become more Jewish. From the beginning, Jewish musicians have used jazz for all three of these purposes, but the emphasis has shifted over time. In the 1920s and 1930s, when Jews were seen as foreign, Jews used jazz to make a more inclusive America, for themselves and for blacks, establishing their American identity. Beginning in the 1940s, as Jews became more accepted into the mainstream, they used jazz to "re-minoritize" and avoid over-assimilation through identification with African Americans. Finally, starting in the 1960s as ethnic assertion became more predominant in America, Jews have used jazz to explore and advance their identities as Jews in a multicultural society.

Jazz and American Culture

Jazz and American Culture PDF Author: Michael Borshuk
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009420178
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
This book offers an entry point for understanding the comprehensive way this uniquely American artistic form has influenced literature, art, film, and other art forms, while also providing a cultural space for political commentary or social critique.

Hazel Scott

Hazel Scott PDF Author: Karen Chilton
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472122835
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
"Hazel Scott was an important figure in the later part of the Black renaissance onward. Even in an era where there was limited mainstream recognition of Black Stars, Hazel Scott's talent stood out and she is still fondly remembered by a large segment of the community. I am pleased to see her legend honored." ---Melvin Van Peebles, filmmaker and director "This book is really, really important. It comprises a lot of history---of culture, race, gender, and America. In many ways, Hazel's story is the story of the twentieth century." ---Murray Horwitz, NPR commentator and coauthor of Ain't Misbehavin' "Karen Chilton has deftly woven three narrative threads---Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Harlem, and Hazel Scott---into a marvelous tapestry of black life, particularly from the Depression to the Civil Rights era. Of course, Hazel Scott's magnificent career is the brightest thread, and Chilton handles it with the same finesse and brilliance as her subject brought to the piano." ---Herb Boyd, author of Baldwin's Harlem: A Biography of James Baldwin "A wonderful book about an extraordinary woman: Hazel Scott was a glamorous, gifted musician and fierce freedom fighter. Thank you Karen Chilton for reintroducing her. May she never be forgotten." ---Farah Griffin, Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University In this fascinating biography, Karen Chilton traces the brilliant arc of the gifted and audacious pianist Hazel Scott, from international stardom to ultimate obscurity. A child prodigy, born in Trinidad and raised in Harlem in the 1920s, Scott's musical talent was cultivated by her musician mother, Alma Long Scott as well as several great jazz luminaries of the period, namely, Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Billie Holiday and Lester Young. Career success was swift for the young pianist---she auditioned at the prestigious Juilliard School when she was only eight years old, hosted her own radio show, and shared the bill at Roseland Ballroom with the Count Basie Orchestra at fifteen. After several stand-out performances on Broadway, it was the opening of New York's first integrated nightclub, Café Society, that made Hazel Scott a star. Still a teenager, the "Darling of Café Society" wowed audiences with her swing renditions of classical masterpieces by Chopin, Bach, and Rachmaninoff. By the time Hollywood came calling, Scott had achieved such stature that she could successfully challenge the studios' deplorable treatment of black actors. She would later become one of the first black women to host her own television show. During the 1940s and 50s, her sexy and vivacious presence captivated fans worldwide, while her marriage to the controversial black Congressman from Harlem, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., kept her constantly in the headlines. In a career spanning over four decades, Hazel Scott became known not only for her accomplishments on stage and screen, but for her outspoken advocacy of civil rights and her refusal to play before segregated audiences. Her relentless crusade on behalf of African Americans, women, and artists made her the target of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during the McCarthy Era, eventually forcing her to join the black expatriate community in Paris. By age twenty-five, Hazel Scott was an international star. Before reaching thirty-five, however, she considered herself a failure. Plagued by insecurity and depression, she twice tried to take her own life. Though she was once one of the most sought-after talents in show business, Scott would return to America, after years of living abroad, to a music world that no longer valued what she had to offer. In this first biography of an important but overlooked African American pianist, singer, actor and activist, Hazel Scott's contributions are finally recognized. Karen Chilton is a New York-based writer and actor, and the coauthor of I Wish You Love, the memoir of legendary jazz vocalist Gloria Lynne.