Holiday & Meeropol: Taking Strange Fruit From The Poplar Trees
Responding to the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith – names and identities of African-American citizens left forgotten and unknown to the breakneck pace of a developing America – a Jewish schoolteacher known as Abel Meeropol related his horror and disgust in a published poem known as ‘Strange Fruit’, after a viewing of the photograph taken by a passerby. Once unknown identities of men are immortalised in an ailing ballad to the injustices brought against them. And here, in this post, a further commemoration of the efforts of the songwriter and the victims of a myopic act.
Decades along, the chilling lyrics, the sodden, melancholy notes touch our souls and bring our minds back to a time in our foreseeable past, that economic disparity, denigration of human rights in the richest developed country in the world should have fallen by the wayside. In the quest for progressivism – in science, in technology and in our pursuit of the arts and expression of debate, Meeropol was wise by his insight into our follies and lack of foresight of the inequities in our world.
In my mind, the possibility that a school child should witness such a poem fills me with joy and hope, but also an intense sadness. The vision of a teacher – realising the possibility of educating the next generation of citizens – is an inspiration for all educators of youth in our current generation and a reminder of the great deal of work yet to be accomplished in our quest for understanding and demonstrating compassion toward the myriad of human culture, facets, personalities.
I warn you, as a sympathetic reader, that this photograph is deeply affecting and if you should endeavour to find it on your own or to follow this link, be prepared for what you will see. The confounding lack of basic human respect and consideration, the distinct void of compassion and the stinging sign of pride by the instigators of a despicable racial hatred will cause you great sorrow.
Indeed, it was inspiration drawn from a gruesome black-and-white photograph – bodies hung perversely, listlessly from poplar trees and covered in scathes, wearing torn and burned and dirtied rags, with skin bloodied and broken at the neck – illustrating a proud crowd of onlookers, taken and brought to gratuitous applause by its receiving audience. African-American citizens did not deserve to have the same rights as White America, it was proclaimed, and those unhappy with the court order for civil rights equality brought the law and the name of justice into their own hands.
‘Those southern trees bear a strange fruit’, Meerpol begins, ‘blood on the leaves and blood at the root, black bodies swinging in the southern breeze’. Fraught, replete with sorrow, tattooed in searing ink by the images of subjugation, torture and death brought upon her race, Billie Holiday took to the stage and delivered the words and melody of ‘Strange Fruit’ – drowning in every word and sentiment embedded in the song – to an unsuspecting jazz-club audience. The club remained bone idle – not a fidget, cough or even a shift crossed the patrons, horrified and brought to awe by the brutal honesty and the actualisation of truth reaching their consciences.
Through economy of words, richness of tone, Meerpol and Holiday were a union unbeknownst of the lives of each other, but sharing equally in the daily fear of persecution, of harassment and discrimination to their families and them and the shared struggle for survival that we have now taken for granted, in our sheltering society.
Watch carefully and feel for the emotion drawn into Billie’s face and imagine the simmering pot of heat shimmering in her voice and carried like an aura in the air around her — boiling emotion, pent-up and culminated over the countless derogatory epithets and physical acts of abuse witnessed the entirety of her life. Billie clearly stood her ground and expressed, in her most dignified and poignant pose, the pent anger, the sorrow and confusion of a society brought to loathe her existence. This song captures my heart at the moment where her conscious presence on stage vacates, where tears well in the corners of her eyes and the neotenic lips, grimacing like a child lost of love, starving and distraught, curve to form words expressing a primal urge for acceptance and respect, owing to the unwarranted discrimination of her age, her sex, her race, her creed and even the caravan that housed her sleeping body. And as the rumour goes, though she persevered and penned myriad songs and inspired a generation of faithful and loving listeners that ultimately accompanied the ushering of civil rights, she died lonely and starving, with seven cents to her name.
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Bon Voyage, Oliver, Adieu!
Manufactured in Taiwan in Feburary of 1995, perhaps on some stuffy and temperamental-weathered day, Oliver the iBook G4 was born. Silicon, solder, mercury, cadium, arsenic, plastic polymers and liquid crystals fused and brought life into the inanimate form. An apogee in technical and architectural mastership, a jewel of computer science and an ace card for Apple Computer, the new notebook for the market was released. Fresh off the assembly line, still piping hot with the aroma of newness and potential and cradled by polystyrene and cardboard, it reached Sydney’s sandy shores sometime in early July and slugged an arduous life ever since its very first boot sequence.
One of the biggest problems we’re facing at the moment is the consumer-culture attitude brought to a gratuitous excess – the belief that old technology products are useless to us, and shouldn’t even be considered for recycling or reuse. And even with the current technologies for recycling available, the big companies and corporations are in it for the money – pulling apart logic boards and solder, to salvage copper and other scrap metal parts for resale. This is an attitude that must be changed if we are truly caring and conscious of our environmental footprint.
Nevertheless, one of the central problems here is that most people are ignorant of the fact that technology products contain a balance of highly recyclable ingredients, highly toxic ingredients and are, in most cases, very easily repairable for re-use. Earlier this year, I managed to donate over fifty old Macs to charities and it is a great sensation to know they will be put to full utilisation. I’m a big believer and practicer of recycling and re-using technology products, and it almost brings tears to my eyes in the joy in seeing this old rig given a new lease of life.
In his admirable off-white shell, Oliver rested many hands, sheltered the internals from the elements of the world. Glue peeled from his joints, metal expanded from his pouts, the close-catch never engaged when you wanted to put the monitor down and head to sleep. Without a complaint and ne’er a system crash, it played DVDs, it did word processing, it surfed the Internet and was so darn hot on your lap, it probably would have fried a couple of eggs for you, while waiting impatiently for it to load the simplest of applications.
Oliver had a special purpose in my heart. Taken from the boy of the same name from the Dickens novel, I rescued him from a decrepit, dusty, dirty home where he was not looked after and seldom used. Ready for disposal, I brought him to life with a jumpstart of technique, patience and expertise, prying together whatever resources I could scavenge and afford. Ruddy-cheeked and devilishly opinionated, we had many quarrels with Microsoft Word — (yes Oliver dear, I realise that my sentence is a ‘fragment’.)
And in October of 2009, he found a new home in the Pyrénées-Orientales, Catalan, Sahorre, a province of Southern France bordering Spain. Soon he will be absorbing the sights and smells of saffron from his farmer-family caretakers and possibly mailing me soppy love-letters that I will need a translator to interpret. Thesis, rent, rantings and more, you had a good run.
Bon Voyage, Oliver, Adieu!
- P.S. I hope you get first-class seats in International AirMail! Cattle-class is just so passè.
Coltrane’s Musical Mastership: ‘On Green Dolphin Street’
Although there’s no official phrase that I am aware of, ‘taking a walk on Green Dolphin Street’ has become a saying in my mind that is synonymous with being prosperous and awfully proud of it.As it turns out, ‘On Green Dolphin Street’ began as (a rather obscure) Hollywood film, the brainchild music of Bronislaw Kaper and Ned Washington as music accompanying the historic drama film. There’s something about the title and the lyrics, in my mind at least, make me think of glamour and city chic, guided by one’s own sense of personal confidence and musical talent. I heard this song for the very first time on a passing, and determined to track down the face behind the music by keeping the melody in my mind for the better part of two years. We’re talking two years ago – we didn’t have Shazam or the iTunes Store to identify and even provide a link to a downloadable copy of the content.
What makes the song so appealing rests in more than just the melody. Who wouldn’t want to get hitched on Green Dolphin Street, or perform a glamorous gig, go on a successful first date or a shopping spree? When I think of green dolphins, I think of something out of the ordinary, something sophisticated and suave. If this is a first time listening to this wonderful song, you’re in for a treat and a paradigm shift, compliments of one of the greatest jazz musicians of our time.
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