Strange Fruit

Jazz melody has al modalitys existed as a voice for disconsolate musicians and audiences. The sounds and rhythms are extremely unique and colorful. It certainly changed the States in the 1920s with the swing effort and it put jazz on the map. During this time troopsy white citizenry started to be influenced by this infectious music, and started to enjoy it. umteen white people also discriminated against blacks and treated them as less than equal. A finale for an artist bring upd Billie pass was to make America listen to the cries of a black man, a black man who was just lynched.Jazz music had to be recognized with its roots. Billie Holiday believed Jazz music had to defend the black people. No better way of organism heard than by the voice of Holiday. She attempted to fight for black rights through her vocal strange fruit, a political song that struck a chord for numerous Americans. Her original name was Eleanor Fagan, born April 7, 1915. Billy Holiday was an American j azz singer, unmatchable of the greatest from the thirties to the 1950s. Also known as Lady Day, Holiday first base acquired a taste of music earshot to her father, who was a traveling musician.She was fortunate non to be deprived of music during the popular jazz long time of the 1920s. At the young age of 15 she started listening to jazz. She listened to the popular recordings of trumpet player Louis Armstrong and singer Bessie smith . She decided to sing and she made her professional singing debut in 1931 at a menial Harlem cabaret. She then continued to record for the first time only two years later. The jazz demesne did not recognize her music until 1935. She toured briefly with the Count Basie and Artie Shaw orchestras before becoming a big nightclub solo attraction in 1940.Her vocal style is considered to be one of the almost original of all time achieved she sang with unique personality and distinguished herself as a professional artist. She never had technical train ing, and she was remedy able to create a beautiful and warm round vocal effect. Her vintage years were nearly 1936-43, when her professional and private relationship with the saxophonist Lester Young started. The team recorded some of the best musical comedy examples of interplay between a vocal and instrumental line. Around her time jazz was being listened to by some(prenominal) people.Many white people were swinging to the beats of Duke Elington, who was probably one of the most famous swing composers. A large majority of the white society was definitely wrapped up in the new phenomenon of jazz. Whats so amazing is that many whites were racist towards the composers of the music they enjoyed. The roots of jazz come from Africa, and it is derived from African rhythms and the blues. During the birth of jazz, the political situation for blacks in America was horrible. Blacks were oppressed and discriminated by whites.They were hated in society, and during this time many blacks wer e being lynched in the South. I guess one could say that Jazz was an outlet for the blacks. It was their anthem of pride, and their creation to sincerely claim in a society that believed blacks shouldnt defecate rights. If white people in society were way out to kill blacks simply because they were black, but at the same time enjoy their music, then wasnt this a contradiction? Billie Holiday was an artist who made this point clear. She saw it as her duty to spread the fair play about the horrors of black oppression.If the people were going to listen and enjoy black music, then they would also have to know about the violence and hate black people lived with in the South. At the height of her life the infamous song she sang was strange fruit, which was a highly charged political song. The song was about blacks being lynched in the south a horrible and abhorrent act. Holiday was one of the first black musicians with the guts to release such an important political message in a song . A schoolteacher named Lewis Allan had written it for her. He was able to create a vision of how mobs of white men killed black men by hanging them from trees.His work wouldnt have had half the impact if Holiday didnt make it her own. Many people objected to the song. It was unlike any other popular song, but it was a huge hit. Here was a song that opened the doors for the Civil Rights movement. There was no better way for the people to experience the torture than through her voice. There was no better way at the time to reach the people of America than through a star who was loved, admired and black. There was another star who was admired loved, admired and black, and his name was Louis Armstrong. Born in New Orleans on August 4, 1901, Louis Satchmo Armstrong was a victim of poverty and discrimination. At the age of eleven, Armstrong began to develop an interest in music, harmonizing on street corners and playing a toy horn. He was in and out of the home throughout his teenage ye ars and was taken under the wing of cock Davis, who taught him music. Under Daviss teaching, Armstrong joined a band, and his talent blossomed. He left the Waifs Home in 1914, and began to play the trumpet all around New Orleans. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s Armstrong maintained one of the most grave continual tours of all time.He began playing with the large bands that were popular at the time. His popularity and fame though, favored many white people in America With his increasing fame came the criticism of a black community that felt he was not living up to the responsibilities of the times. The late fifties brought with them the civil rights movement, and many blacks saw Armstrong as an uncle tom, playing for to begin with white audiences around the world. Though he stated that these claims were not true, Armstrong was then in his sixties and mainly concerned with continuing to travel and perform.He didnt want to get involved with the Civil Rights issues like Holiday start ed to do. He probably felt that trying to protect blacks would take away from his fame and popularity. Holiday was originally one of the few black musicians who started very early with the rallying cries for the Civil Rights movement a change for the way black people were treated. In the Nineteen-Forties, Holiday started using the illegal drug heroin. Soon her body essential more and more of the drug. It began to affect her health. In Nineteen-Forty-Seven, Billie Holiday was arrested for possessing illegal drugs.She was found guilty and sentenced to nine months in prison. When she was released, New York City officials refused to give her a document that permitted her to work in any household that served wet drinks. This meant Holiday no longer could sing in nightclubs and jazz clubs. She could sing only in theaters and design halls. Ten days after her release from jail, she performed at New Yorks famous Carnegie Hall. People filled the place to hear her sing. One of the songs s he sang that night was Strange Fruit. Her last years were a real struggle against the destructive drug heroin.It eventually took her life but her later recordings show that, although her voice was ravaged, her technique was still amazing. She died young, but not before leaving a serious scar in the music world and in the United States. Her song was not pretty, and it wasnt supposed to be. The song was meant to be unprocessed and powerful, which it was for its time. She distinguished herself as one of the most famous black musicians to sing about what she thought was most important, not only for herself and for her people, but also for what the music was about.