Soul Music: Strange Fruit
Exploring music with a powerful emotional impact, starting with Billie Holiday's famous song Strange Fruit.
"Southern trees bear a strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood at the root..." - Billie Holiday's famous song expresses the horror and anguish of those communities subjected to a campaign of lynching in the American South. Soul Music hears the stories of people whose relatives were lynched by white racists and of the various forms of grief, anger and reconciliation that have followed. These include the cousin of teenager Emmett Till, whose killing in 1955 for whistling at a white woman, added powerful impetus to the civil rights movement.
Despite its association with the deep south, the song was actually composed in 1930's New York by a Jewish schoolteacher, Abel Meeropol. Meeropol adopted the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg after they were executed in 1953 as Soviet spies. One of those children, Robert, talks of his adopted father's humanity and his belief that the Rosenberg's were killed in a 'state sanctioned lynching by the American government'. For him, Strange Fruit is a comforting reminder of his adopted father's passionate belief in justice and compassion.
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- Thu 10 Dec 2015 02:06GMT成人快手 World Service Americas and the Caribbean
- Thu 10 Dec 2015 03:06GMT成人快手 World Service Online, East Asia & UK DAB/Freeview only
- Thu 10 Dec 2015 04:06GMT成人快手 World Service South Asia
- Thu 10 Dec 2015 05:06GMT成人快手 World Service Australasia
- Thu 10 Dec 2015 07:06GMT成人快手 World Service East and Southern Africa
- Thu 10 Dec 2015 13:06GMT成人快手 World Service UK DAB/Freeview & Online only
- Thu 10 Dec 2015 14:06GMT成人快手 World Service East and Southern Africa, South Asia, Europe and the Middle East, East Asia & West and Central Africa only
- Thu 10 Dec 2015 20:06GMT成人快手 World Service Americas and the Caribbean, Online, Europe and the Middle East & UK DAB/Freeview only
- Thu 10 Dec 2015 21:06GMT成人快手 World Service Australasia, South Asia, East Asia & West and Central Africa only
- Sat 12 Dec 2015 19:32GMT成人快手 World Service East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa only
- Sun 13 Dec 2015 05:32GMT成人快手 World Service except News Internet
- Sun 13 Dec 2015 10:06GMT成人快手 World Service except News Internet
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