Strange Fruit- Voices of a Lynching
The audio story I listened to is centered around the famous blues song Strange Fruit, written by Abel Meeropol and sung by Billie Holiday. This song was inspired by the most famous lynching photo, featuring two African American males hanging from a tree surrounded by people, taken in Marion, Indiana in 1930. Recordings of people who witnessed and participated in this event were found in a basement and used in this audio story. The testimony of a survivor of this event, James Cameron, is also heard throughout this story.
The story starts by reflecting on the events happening today in Ferguson, Missouri with Michael Brown. The voice says that the events can easily be recognized by the image of the eighteen-year-old lying on the ground in the hot summer sun. This image of race might conjure up memories of another very popular image; the image of two young African American boys hanging dead from a tree with a crowd of whites surrounding them. All different types of people are in the crowd pointing at the bodies, some even smiling. The correlation made between these two events that happened more than eight decades apart makes the story very compelling.
Verses from the song Strange Fruit is played throughout this story. Since the song is slow and bluesy, it sets a depressing tone for this story. The lyrics also add disturbing visual details of the event.
The testimonies of the people involved make the listener feel like they were there witnessing the event. Hearing from those who had a hand in the lynching and from the man whose life was sparred that night makes the story complete. Not only does one get to hear about the horrifying event, they get to hear why people did it and what the people in the crowd were thinking.
Finally, the way the beginning speaker talks adds drama and sets the tone for the story. He often takes long pauses between words to create tension and suspense. The voices of the witnesses give the story more meaning as well. The voices are obviously from older people, so they are telling these stories from memory. This shows that the night these lynchings took place was traumatic enough to leave a lasting impression on the witnesses, victim, and persecutors for many years.
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This story is very effective in using music. As you said, it creates a dramatic tone for the story, but it also helps to set the scene of 1930’s America. Playing music from the time period is an effective way of creating a distance between the past and the present. This story, however, uses a past event to comment on a current event. This could create a strange contrast in the intended goal. I, however, believe that this works well with this piece. This is because it makes a strong link between the past and present, reinforcing the similarities found within the two events.